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.
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
![Andrea Concetti as Moses [Photo by Liz Lauren courtesy of Chicago Opera Theater]](http://www.operatoday.com/Moses_COT_Photo-3.gif)
Although productions of Gioachino Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto are infrequent, the lively debate on successive versions of the work has generally led to questions of priority and to informative discussions on performance history.
For the first opera during its Spring 2010 season Chicago Opera Theater staged a production based on the new critical edition of Mosè by Charles S. and Patricia B. Brauner. As Philip M. Gossett indicates in his notes accompanying the program for this production, the Italian Mosè, originally performed in Naples, “is a work of great value” which “contains some of Rossini’s finest music.” The present production, with strong vocal contributions from a convincing cast, gave ample support to these statements.
Under the direction of Leonardo Vordoni the brief orchestral prelude set a tone both stately and somber, in which the distraught court of the Pharaoh and the plight of Moses and his people are alternately depicted. Darkness has fallen over the land, and Faraone determines to free the camp of Moses in order to release Egypt from such a plague. When he sends for Moses and makes known his intention, the captive leader calls out to God and, with the gesture of his staff, causes light to return to the land. The two opposing leaders were sung by bass-baritone Tom Corbell as Faraone and bass Andrea Concetti as Mosè. Mr. Corbell showed admirable facility in his delivery of rapid notes whereas Mr. Concetti struck an imposing figure with declamatory weight in his delivery of Mosè’s opening lines. In the ensemble showing varied reactions to this change, brought about by Mosè, Faraone and his consort Amaltea are joined by the Egyptian heir and Prince Osiride along with Aronne, the compatriot of Mosè. Faraone declares that the Hebrews will, in return for this gesture, be set free and Amaltea supports the decision. Corbell as Faraone was joined in his florid statement with the equally challenging line composed for Amaltea, here sung admirably by Kathryn Leemhuis, a member of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago. Leemhuis gave a strong individual impression in her careful decoration yet blended with the others to yield a memorable and dramatic ensemble. The final lead member featured in this group was the Osiride of Taylor Stayton. Mr. Stayton shows great promise as a tenor able to project with dramatic lyricism the challenging dramatic line featured in this and comparable pieces by Rossini. Here Osiride expresses his disagreement concerning the release of the Hebrews, since his secret beloved Elcia is one of the people of Mosè, now scheduled to depart in freedom.
After the others leave, Osiride plots with the high priest Mambre and suggests that the latter use his powers to sow discord once again between Mosè and Faraone. Elcia now joins her lover Osiride in order to bid farewell as she expects to leave Egypt with Mosè. In their moving duet Siân Davies sang the part of Elcia with great urgency and proved to be an appropriate match for Mr. Stayton’s compelling depiction of the Egyptian prince. Upon the exciting conclusion to their duet, Amaltea appears and chides Mambre for his attempts to dissuade Faraone from releasing the Hebrews. Her words go unheeded, for Osiride’s plan has succeeded, Faraone declares his decision revoked, and the Hebrews feel themselves betrayed. At the close of the act Mosè invites further storms to fall upon the land of Egypt.
Taylor Stayton as Osiride
After an intermission, Acts II and III were performed without pause in this production by Chicago Opera Theater. Attempts to resolve the imprisonment of the Hebrews are fueled by Amaltea’s independent negotiations with Mosè. At the same time Faraone resolves to marry off Osiride to an Armenian princess and to proclaim him co-ruler of Egypt. The dismay of Osiride was expressed in Stayton’s fervent delivery, in which he maintained hopes still to retain Elcia’s love. When the latter enters among the imprisoned Hebrews, she advised Osiride to seek an equivalent love in his official betrothed. Ms. Davies’ moving expressiveness and exquisitely secure pitch in this aria remained one of the highlights of the performance. Osiride then threatens violence to Mosè but he is, instead, struck dead by a lightning bolt; as the act concludes, both Faraone and Elcia mourn his loss.
Jorge Prego as Aronne, Andrea Concetti as Moses and Siân Davies as Elcia with the Israelites
In the brief Act III on the banks of the Red Sea the famous prayer delivered by Mosè calms his people, who fear that they will be sacrificed to the anger of Faraone’s troops. Elcia is encouraged to continue her journey with the other Hebrews. In this Mr. Concetti as Mosè delivered a fervent declamation in the concluding piece of the opera. The Red Sea parts and his people cross, just as Faraone and the high priest are swallowed up as they attempt to pursue. The dramatic moment received an appropriately conclusive orchestral flourish.
Salvatore Calomino