In May of 2013, the Spire Series at the First Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, observed the fiftieth anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy by presenting a work dealing with the 1963 assassination.
Dulce Rosa, a brand new opera, had its world premiere Friday night, May 17, 2013 at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California. It was produced by Los Angeles Opera, but staged in the smaller theater.
Richard Jones’ 2009 production of Verdi’s Falstaff translates the action from the first Elizabethan age to the start of the second.
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.
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.
Once again, George Frederick Handel’s old stamping ground of St. George’s Hanover Square, London, resounded last night to the sound of his music as aspiring young singers from all over the world fought out the Final of the London Handel Singing Competition.
Year on year the competition’s status has grown and this was reflected last night in both the quality of the singing, and the quantity of audience there to listen – the place was packed with keen Handelians of all ages, music agents, directors and critics. Some sixty original young performers had started out on the audition and knock-out rounds, so the final six singing last night had made it through against considerable opposition and it showed. What was perhaps most interesting of all was perusing the contestant’s resumés and noting that two came from Australia, one from South Africa, one from Portugal and one from Eire.
As with all competitions, what the judges are looking for is not always what is appreciated most by the audience, but at least the London Handel one acknowledges this with both 1st and 2nd prizes and also an Audience Prize, given to the singer who gains the most votes in a quick-fire ballot taken immediately after the singing stops. Last night overall victory went to the only baritone singing, Derek Welton, the possessor of a fine, robust instrument who concentrated his fire on shorter oratorio and anthem pieces, with only one excerpt from an opera. His singing was focused and exact and technically very secure, his wider experience showing, even if he was rather wooden in his character portrayals. At the other end of the male vocal scale, and receiving the 2nd prize, was the countertenor Christopher Ainslie who conversely concentrated on Handel’s great arias for castrato from Serse, Orlando and Tamerlano. His rather elegantly “English” voice, although slightly covered at times, was complemented by a pleasing stage presence and flair for interpretation. For the ladies, it came as no surprise when the Audience Prize was bestowed on the charming Irish soprano, Anna Devin. Her strong interpretive skills were matched by a strong, secure technique and beautiful vocal tone and she shone in her two arias from Alcina and Giulio Cesare.
The losing competitors had nothing to be ashamed of – they all sang with credit and commitment and with great promise for the future: Gilliam Ramm, Joana Seara, sopranos and Julia Riley, mezzo-soprano. The first named had a big voice, perhaps lacking a little in Handelian style but impressive nevertheless, Seara from Portugal sang with delightful delicacy and precision, without too much power however, and Riley seemed to suffer a little from nerves and a rather odd choice of repertoire in her first items which hardly showed her voice off as they might. Her final aria from Ariodante showed glimpses of what she may be capable of in time.
As usual all the young singers were accompanied by the very supportive and elegant London Handel Orchestra, guided by Laurence Cummings.
© Sue Loder 2007