“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.
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799).
For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth.
Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin.
In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series, ‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction.
The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know.
The Paris Opéra has not staged a full Ring Cycle since 1957, but its current season will conclude with a correction of this grand operatic gap.
This looks like a winner, with an esteemed conductor (Zubin Mehta), top-rank cast (Violeta Urmana, Marcello Giordani, Carlo Guelfi), and a production directed by Nicholas Joël that originated at the Opernhaus Zürich, a house that takes some chances and scores some successes.
But the beauty expected doesn’t even go skin deep. While Verdi’s great score keeps La Forza del Destino in the standard repertory, the problematic libretto requires both sharp intelligence and inspired imagination. Sure, one can go back to the classic video with Tebaldi and Corelli, where the fabric of the cheap sets ripples every time a character brushes past. At least their singing mesmerizes, distracting the 21st century viewer from the 19th century production values. Despite the quality of the performers here, that magic act does not repeat itself.
To be fair to Nicholas Joël, the booklet credits state that the production was “restaged by Timo Schlüssel.” All that matters is that the result of the men’s work feels like an elaborately costumed concert performance. The chorus stand in blocks or move in unison. The actors usually occupy a small space near the front of the stage and seldom interact convincingly. The costumes of Franca Squarciapino, while well-made, all seem to have come straight from the cleaner’s. Even after a battle-scene the two Dons look immaculate. Ezio Frigerio’s sets barely distinguish between the opera’s varied settings, with the final scene being the lamest. Leonora’s mountain hideaway is simply a barred cage, like one would see at some dreadful old-time zoo. Working in such forlorn circumstances, even the most vibrant of performers would struggle. As commendable as their vocal efforts may be, these singers need more direction to be effective. Violeta Urmana is a very healthy Leonora, with that pitiful loaf of bread for her meal apparently having a substantial carbo load. Perhaps needless to say, the effort to make her convincing as a male produces laughable results. But close the eyes and the ears will hear a substantial voice that can meet all of the challenging role’s demands, often with attractive power. Carlo Guelfi delivers a “shades of black” interpretation of Don Carlo, Leonora’s vengeful brother, but again, he delivers the goods vocally.
Marcello Giordani comes across as more committed to portraying a character, and his Don Alvaro does have both nobility, pride, and the requisite fatalism. As is typical with this busy singer, the middle voice sounds as good as any tenor today, but the top range is variable - sometimes ringing out as tenor fans love, and other times turning hoarse, constricted. Julia Gertseva’s Preziosilla can be counted a success in so far as the character is not nearly as annoying as she can be. Roberto Scandiuzzi’s Padre Guardino and Bruno De Simone’s Fra Melitone fade into the grayness of the production’s dim inspiration.
Zubin Mehta doesn’t try to prettify the score, letting its occasionally crass martial music roar away. The singers are always well-supported, and the forces of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, where this performance took place in 2007 (TDK doesn’t give any more time information), play idiomatically.
And to get really picky, TDK could do a better job of graphically identifying which of the two discs is which, as they have identical faces except for very tiny lettering with the disc number tucked away under the copyright. Go for the Tebaldi/Corelli, if it can be found.
Chris Mullins