Desire and deception; Amor and artifice. In Jan Philipp Gloger’s new production of Così van tutte at the Royal Opera House, the artifice is of the theatrical, rather than the human, kind. And, an opera whose charm surely lies in its characters’ amiable artfulness seems more concerned to underline the depressing reality of our own deluded faith in human fidelity and integrity.
On September 22, 2016, Los Angeles Opera presented Darko Tresnjak’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Macbeth. Verdi and Francesco Maria Piave based their opera on Shakespeare’s play of the same name.
On September 18th, at a casual Sunday matinee, Pacific Opera Project presented a surprising choice for a small company. It was Igor Stravinsky’s 1951 three act opera, The Rake’s Progress. It’s a piece made for today's supertitles with its exquisitely worded libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman.
We are nearing the end of Classical Opera’s MOZART 250 sojourn through 1766, a year that the company’s artistic director Ian Page admits was ‘on face value … a relatively fallow year’. I’m not so sure: Jommelli’s Il Vogoleso, performed at the Cadogan Hall in April, was a gem. But, then, I did find the repertoire that Classical Opera offered at the Wigmore Hall in January, ‘worthy rather than truly engaging’ (review). And, this programme of Haydn and his Czech contemporary Josef Mysliveček was stylishly executed but did not absolutely convince.
Globalization finds its way ever more to San Francisco Opera where Italian composer Marco Tutino’s La Ciociara saw the light of day in 2015 and now, 2016, Chinese composer Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber has been created.
Renowned Polish tenor Piotr Beczala and well-known collaborative pianist Martin Katz opened the San Diego Opera 2016–2017 season with a recital at the Balboa Theater on Saturday, September 17th.
San Francisco Opera makes occasional excursions into the operatic big-time, such just now was Giordano’s blockbuster Andrea Chénier, last seen at the War Memorial 23 years ago (1992) and even then after a hiatus of 17 years (1975).
There is no reason why, given the right performers, second-tier Verdi can’t be a top-tier operatic experience, as was the case with this concert version of I Due Foscari.
Since their first appearance in Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s literary master-piece, during the Spanish Golden Age, the ingenuous and imaginative knight-errant, Don Quixote, and his loyal subordinate and squire, Sancho Panza, have touched the creative imagination of composers from Salieri to Strauss, Boismortier to Rodrigo.
Bampton Classical Opera’s 2016 double-bill ‘touched down’ at St John’s Smith Square last night, following performances in The Deanery Garden at Bampton and The Orangery of Westonbirt School earlier this summer.
Daniele Gatti opened the first series of Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s season with a slightly uneven performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. With four planned, this staple repertoire for the RCO meant to introduce Gatti to the RCO subscribers.
Opera San Jose opened a commendably impassioned Lucia di Lammermoor that sets the company’s bar very high indeed as it begins its new season.
The approach of the 2016-17 opera season has brought rising anticipation and expectation for the ROH’s new production - the first at Covent Garden for almost 30 years - of Bellini’s bel canto master-piece, Norma.
Last June, Riccardo Chailly led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion for his last concert as Principal Conductor.
After its world premiere at Royal Opera House in London last year, the German première of Georg Friedrich Haas’s Morgen und Abend took place at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Rarely have I experienced such fabulous singing in such a dreadful production. With magnificent voices, Andreas Schager and Dorothea Röschmann rescued Michael Thalheimer’s grotesque staging of von Weber’s Der Freischütz. At Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Alexander Soddy led a richly detailed, transparent and brilliantly glowing Berliner Staatskapelle.
For the penultimate BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday 9 September 2016, Marin Alsop conducted the BBC Youth Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Verdi's Requiem with soloists Tamara Wilson, Alisa Kolosova, Dimitri Pittas, and Morris Robinson.
“Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.”
When I look back on the 2016 Proms season, this Opera Rara performance of Semiramide - the last opera that Rossini wrote for Italy - will be, alongside Pekka Kuusisto’s thrillingly free and refreshing rendition of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto - one of the stand-out moments.
Of all the places in Germany, Oper am Rhein at Theater Duisburg staged an intriguing American double bill of rarities. An experience that was well worth the trip to this desolate ghost town, remnant of industrial West Germany.
Lieder and opera are different worlds. But understanding the differences helps us appreciate what makes each form distinct. Hugo Wolf’s songs come close to bridging the genres. They’ve been described as “miniature operas” where dramas are distilled into compact form.
The Wigmore Hall is hallowed ground for Lieder. Built in 1901 for Bechstein, it is one of the world’s great recital halls, where many great singers have appeared, even though it seats only 450. It’s the ambience that draws them. They’d make more money in a big arena, but the Wigmore Hall is a special experience. It’s small enough that interaction between performers and audience is direct and intimate. This is the ethos that makes Lieder so special. It’s intensely personal and nuanced : song through a microscope to speak, but imbued with warmth and feeling.
Christian Gerhaher is a favourite with the Wigmore Hall audience. On this evening Anna Netrebko and Dimitri Hvorotovsky were scheduled to sing elsewhere in town, impacting on sales, so the Wigmore Hall wasn’t sold out as usual. Gerhaher was singing Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch, with his regular pianist, Gerold Huber and a young soprano, Mojca Erdmann.
The 46 songs in the collection form a narrative, or even a cycle. Together, they form a kaleidoscope of “Italian” life, romanticized through Austro-German ears.. Hugo Wolf never fulfilled his dream of going to Italy, but each song is full of vividly imagined incident. Dissolute monks seduce girls whose mothers trust men in robes, a girl longs for “older men” – aged 14!. Each song is like a moment in a larger story. Der schöne Toni’s eating himself to death because Tonina has dumped him, and a man’s heart jumps clean out of his chest, running off to see his lover.
Plenty of drama, then, in these songs, which Wolf plays up exuberantly with witty piano commentary. They lend themselves to more dramatic treatment than do more introspective Lieder. Indeed, much of the impact would be lost if they were performed without a lively sense of fun.
Gerhaher was in good form. His voice is richly resonant, yet flexible enough that he takes Wolf’s tricky rhythms with ease. Yet these songs are still fundamentally, Lieder, where the action is inward. Gerhaher was most impressive in songs where the singer has to hint at deeper mysteries. For example, Schon streck’t ich aus im Bett, where the lover jumps out of bed to play his lute. Wolf sets the last stanzas with a strange, meandering lilt which evokes the strumming of the lute but also the text which pointedly mentions that the singers has walked away from many girls, his music “wafted away in the wind”. It’s no serenade.
Lieder is private, almost silent expression. There’s no orchestra, set or plot to compete with, so the dynamics are different. Mojca Erdmann is young, who’s still having to prove herself with her voice, so naturally she’s more inclined to a declamatory approach that highlights the technical side of her singing. Her flourishes in ‘Ich hab’ in Penna’ would sound impressive in the theatre, but overwhelm the balance in the song. True, the song’s about a girl bragging about her many admirers, but it’s more effective with a touch of subtlety.
As the first song in the set goes, ‘Auch kleine Dinge’, “even small things can delight”. “Think only of the rose”, it continues in delicate tones, “it’s small but smells sweet”.
Anne Ozorio