06 Mar 2007
OONY Performs Cilèa’s L’Arlesiana
It is well known that the Opera Orchestra of New York’s performances are required events for opera aficionados to hear the the most exciting performances of the season.
Recently in Performances
The Importance of Being Earnest, Covent Garden
The Importance of Being Earnest , Gerald Barry’s fifth opera, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Barbican, and was first performed in concert, Thomas Adès conducting the London premiere.
Death in Venice by ENO
‘Beauty is the one form of spirituality that we experience through the senses.’ In Thomas Mann’s, Death in Venice, Plato’s axiom stirs the hopes of the aging, intellectually stale poet, Gustav von Aschenbach, that he may rekindle his creativity.
Madama Butterfly, Opera Holland Park
There is a sense in which it all began in London, Puccini having been seized in 1900 with the idea of an opera on this subject after watching David Belasco’s play here.
An Evening of Zarzuela and Latin American Music at Los Angeles Opera
The tenor that the audience most wanted to hear, Plácido Domingo, opened the vocal program with “Junto al puente de la peña” (Next to the rock bridge) from La Canción del Olvido (The song of Oblivion) by José Serrano. He sounded rested and his voice soared majestically over the orchestra.
Così fan tutte in San Francisco
Tucked away somewhere in the San Francisco Opera warehouse was an old John Cox production of Così fan tutte from Monte Carlo. Well, not that old by current standards at San Francisco Opera.
Rossini Maometto Secondo Garsington Opera at Wormsley
Rossini's Maometto Secondo is a major coup for Garsington Opera at Wormsley, confirming its status as the leading specialist Rossini house in Britain. Maometto Secondo is a masterpiece, yet rarely performed because it's formidably difficult to sing. It's a saga with some of the most intense music Rossini ever wrote, expressing a drama so powerful that one can understand why early audiences needed "happy endings" to water down its impact
Peter Grimes in Concert
I suppose it was inevitable that, in this Britten Centenary year, the 66th Aldeburgh Festival would open with Peter Grimes.
Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Garsington Opera at Wormsley
Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Garsington Opera at Wormsley isn’t Mozart as you’d expect but it’s true to the spirit of Mozart who loved witty, madcap japes.
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne
What a pity! On a glorious — well, by recent English standards — summer’s day, there can be few more beautiful English countryside settings than Glyndebourne, with the added bonus, as alas much of the audience appears to understand it, of an opera house attached.
Queens, Heroines and Ladykillers
Described by one critic as “cosmically gifted”, during her tragically short career, American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson amazed and delighted audiences with the spellbinding beauty of her singing and the astonishing honesty of her performances.
Alzira by Chelsea Opera Group
“I wrote it almost without noticing.” So Verdi declared when reminded of his eighth — and perhaps least frequently performed, opera, Alzira. One might say that, since he composed the work, no-one else has much noticed either.
Les Contes d’Hoffmann in San Francisco
Just when you thought the protagonist was Hoffmann! Who, rather what stole the show?
La Tosca in Los Angeles
When is verismo verily veristic? Or what is a virginal girl dressed in communion white doing in the two murderous acts of the Los Angeles Opera’s current production of Tosca? And why does she sing the shepherd's song?
Lohengrin, Welsh National Opera
Wagner’s Lohengrin is not an unfamiliar visitor to the UK thanks, in the main, to Elijah Moshinsky’s perennial production at Covent Garden.
Philip Glass: The Perfect American
Philip Glass's The Perfect American at the ENO in London is a visual treat, but the libretto is mind-numbingly anodyne.
Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park
Jonathan Dove's Mansfield Park, with libretto by his regular collaborator Alasdair Middleton, has the remarkable distinction of being the first completed operatic adaptation of any Jane Austen novel to be staged.
Wagner 200th Anniversary Concert
London’s two principal opera companies have offered a baffling near-silence as their response to Wagner’s two-hundredth anniversary.
Toronto’s Triple Success
If a recent trio of musically superlative performances at Canadian Opera Company is indicative of their norm, the casting director should get a hefty bonus.
Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il Trionfo dell’Onore
Just when you imagine you’ve got the operatic time-line fixed in your mind in a clean sweep of what goes where and when and how, you hear another work from another forgotten corner of the repertory that upends one’s conclusions.
Handel’s Rodrigo by Operamission
Nothing inspires fable quite like defeat. The great riddle of Spanish history is how the Christian Visigoths managed to lose the Iberian peninsula to the Moors in one small battle in 711 and took eight hundred years to get it back.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Performances
OONY Music Director Eve Queler’s personal magnetism (and no doubt hard work) attracts a rich array of talented operatic voices, both of the internationally known and more fledging variety, in order to perform rarely performed gems that have fallen out of—or have never made into—the opera repertory.
Most recently, OONY presented Francesco Cilèa’s L’Arlesiana, a lyric drama in three acts, on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 in Carnegie Hall. Cilèa’s opera, which was premiered in 1897 by Teatro Lirico in Milan, is based on the same Daudet play for which Bizet wrote incidental music that is still popular. The libretto for L’Arlesiana was created for Cilèa by Leopoldo Marenco.
The opera portrays the story of Federico, a handsome young man who is smitten with a woman from the nearby town of Arles. The first act reveals that the woman’s character is suspect, and that her love for Federico is quite likely feigned as she has compromised her purity with the stableman Metifio. Ultimately, despite the interventions of his mother, the local girl Vivetta, and the advice of the wise shepherd Baldasarre, Federico is plunged into a jealous frenzy over the Arlesian and takes his own at the end of the tale.
Most of the cast performed well, though perhaps not with all the musicality and flair that is expected from OONY. Making her debut with OONY in L’Arlesiana , Marianne Cornetti performed convincingly in the role of Rosa Mamai, Federico’s doting mother. Ihn-Kyu Lee made brief appearances as Federico’s rival—an ill-mannered stableman also obsessed with the woman from Arles, who never makes an appearance nor is named beyond “L’Arlesiana.” Weston Hurt performed the role of Baldasarre with charm and wooed the audience with his warm voice, which befit the role of the wise, older shepherd. Collette Boudreaux played the L’innocenza—Federico’s simpleton younger brother.
This third performance of the season was the last opera-in-concert of the 2007 – 2008 series; however, those who attended will be glad to know that Latonia Moore, who made her OONY debut as Vivetta in L’Arlesiana, will also be showcased in a recital on May 3, 2007 with OONY as the 2007 Vidda Award recipient. The Moore graduated from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, was acclaimed as Micaëla in the New York City Opera production of Carmen earlier this season. Moore’s performance in L’Arlesiana indicates that big things will happen for this young soprano who has many debut performances in the U.S. and in Europe coming up in the next season.
The most generous portion of the applause for the evening went to the young tenor, Giuseppe Filianoti as the lovelorn Federico. Filianoti made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2005 as Edgar in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, but L’Arlesiana was his only appearance in the U.S. this season. The tenor aria “Lamento di Federico” is featured in many tenors’ repertoires, although the rest of the opera is rarely performed. Filianoti’s interpretation of this aria that helped sparked Caruso’s career more than a century ago caused the house to erupt into applause so enthusiastic that Filianoti repeated the aria. A gentleman near me remarked somewhat incredulously, “It was even better the second time!”—a sentiment with which I fully agree.
Megan Jenkins