What do you get if you cross Benjamin Britten, ‘one-page scores’, an innovative performing ensemble and ‘Wigmore Learning’ — the Wigmore Hall’s imaginative outreach programme which aims to provide access to chamber music and song through innovative creative programmes, online resources and events?
Marseille woke up this past January 11 stunned to find itself number two on the New York Times list of 46 places you should visit in 2013 (Rio was number one, Paris just made the list at number 46).
Garsington Opera at Wormsley is producing the British premiere of Giacomo Rossini´s Maometto Secondo. Garsington Opera is well-known for its role in reviving Rossini rarities in Britain. Since 1994, there have been 14 productions of 12 Rossini operas, and David Parry has conducted eleven since 2002. He´s very enthusiastic about Maometto Secondo.
Rossini’s La donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House boasts a superstar cast. Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez are perhaps the best in these roles in the business at this time. Yet the conductor Michele Mariotti is also hot news.
It would seem a logical step for the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey to take on the role of the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.
“Aim for excellence”, says Douglas Boyd, new Artistic Director of Garsington Opera at Wormsley, “and the audience will follow you”.
When I spoke with Zandra Rhodes, she was in her large San Diego workspace, which she described as having walls decorated with her own huge black and white drawings.
Palm Beach audiences are famous for their glamour, but in recent years a special star has sparkled amid the jewels, sequins, feathers and furs (whatever the weather).
When the soprano Jessica Pratt first arrived in Italy, she had yet to learn the language or sing in a staged opera.
On Wednesday evening, February 20, Los Angeles Opera gave a press conference at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion featuring Music Director James Conlon.
It is another “What Could Have Been” moment. The debut of Brokeback Mountain by Charles Wuorinen is part of Madridʼs Teatro Real coming season.
Plans for July’s Aix-en-Provence Festival were announced and opera is, of course, at the center of the program with a particularly noteworthy Richard Strauss production.
Amsterdam enjoys a rare visit from Moscow’s Stanislavski Opera at the landmark Koninklijk Carre Theater, for three performances of Tchaikovski’s Eugene Onegin and a Sunday morning opera concert, on February 1st-3rd.
A new festival hall has been inaugurated in the small town of Erl in the Tyrolean mountains.
Yesterday, Conductor Riccardo Muti opened the Rome Opera, where he is “honorary conductor for life,” with a gala presentation of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.
When tenor Michael Spyres takes the stage at Carnegie Hall on December 5th, he will be in heady company.
One of the most noteworthy and controversial productions in recent memory arrived in Belgium with hurricane force as Director Terry Gilliam’s inaugural opera, an inspired interpretation of Hector Berlioz’s Le Damnation de Faust, blasted into Ghent, followed by a run in Antwerp.
Florian Boesch is singing Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin at the Oxford Lieder Festival on Sunday 14th October. This won’t be routine. Radically challenging conventional interpretation, Boesch says “I don’t believe it ends in suicide”
Exciting developments at Glyndebourne ! Many new initiatives which could transform Glyndebourne from a summer festival to a truly international, year-round opera experience.
The recently released numbers for the past season at Barcelona’s opera Liceu gives some hope for the future.
Writer Frank Cadenhead discusses Wuthering Heights, the nearly-finished new operatic endeavor by composer Frédéric Chaslin. Cadenhead recently traveled to Valenica, Spain, where Chaslin and librettist Paula Heil Fisher are hard at work on the piece.
Frédéric Chaslin has, for some years, been juggling with the title Composer-slash-conductor. Appearing on major podiums around the world, this Paris-born maestro is looking to find a better balance for his two ambitions. Composer/conductors are more common than you might think - Bernstein, Furtwangler, and Mahler readily come to mind - and the list is extensive. A few years ago, Esa-Pekka Salonen took a sabbatical from his Los Angeles duties to devote the maximum time to his opuses. Others try to get something done during summer vacations.
Chaslin is looking to make a major mark as composer as he nears completion of his opera, Wuthering Heights, large parts of which he recorded Mid-September in Valencia, Spain. Chaslin, often composing on stolen weekends at his houseboat on the Seine, is looking to increase his composition time and is in the process of thinning his future appearances. “Look at (Lorin) Maazel and his first opera, 1984, which I rather liked,” he argued. “Now that he is in his 70s, did he wait too long to start? I’m now in my mid-40s and when do I start getting serious? Now I am in the process of trimming my future schedule to give me more time to compose.”
His new opera is unapologetically neo-romantic. He is on record with his belief that Twentieth Century classical music went off the rails into serialism and dense atonality. Even though he was, for a time, associated with Pierre Boulez (another composer/conductor) and the Paris contemporary music group Ensemble Intercontemporain, his book, ”Music in Every Sense,” takes modern music to task. “Music should always engage the audience,” he emphasized to me. The music for Wuthering Heights is so accessible that there was some debate at the inception of the project on whether to frame it as a “musical.” After most all has been committed to paper, he clearly sees it as operatic in every sense and the scope and drama of what was heard clearly support that view.
He has found a passionate advocate of the Emily Bronte novel in his librettist. Paula Heil Fisher is a writer, Broadway producer of musicals, filmmaker and head of Millennial Arts Productions who is developing this particular project. Clearly devoted to the classic novel of love and revenge she describes reading the novel as a child - one of her first novels - and the strong impact it had. She sees the author in all of the strong characters, an oblique protest against the limited power for women of Bronte’s time.
In the almost two hours of of music recorded in the spectacular Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Chaslin found a “responsive, eager” house orchestra, the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valencia. Built with the help of Lorin Maazel, finishing his last season as conductor of the New York Philharmonic and Valencia’s current musical director, the top young talent (the average age is around 30) was selected from auditions around the world. This orchestra, only two years old, has already established itself as one of the more important in Europe.
Frédéric Chaslin
Young too are the leads, both of whom are ready for their close up. Long haired lanky American tenor Andrew Richards seems an ideal heartthrob as Heathcliff playing alongside the stunning young soprano, Olga Peretyatko, as Cathy. Both have already made waves on major stages, are very committed to this project and are names to note.
What chunks were heard during the two days at the recording session would certainly suggest the complete opera would likely qualify as a major event on the world’s musical calendar. The mature Cathy’s aria, the love duet with Heathcliff and the haunting music accompanying the Moor’s Chorus (with the London Philharmonia Chorus imported for the occasion) were particularly well-crafted and moving.
While the particularly lush orchestration during the arias will certainly be balanced in the recording studio, one can only wonder (as some of the singers do) how the balance will be achieved in the opera house. The reported three hours plus of music also might need some scissor application. However, walking to lunch, this critic, who has sat through uncounted new operas, was surprised to find him whistling a tune from the music. How often has that happened? I can’t remember the last time.
[Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in PlaybillArts. It is reprinted with permission of Millennial Arts Productions, the rights holder.]