The Importance of Being Earnest , Gerald Barry’s fifth opera, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Barbican, and was first performed in concert, Thomas Adès conducting the London premiere.
‘Beauty is the one form of spirituality that we experience through the senses.’ In Thomas Mann’s, Death in Venice, Plato’s axiom stirs the hopes of the aging, intellectually stale poet, Gustav von Aschenbach, that he may rekindle his creativity.
There is a sense in which it all began in London, Puccini having been seized in 1900 with the idea of an opera on this subject after watching David Belasco’s play here.
The tenor that the audience most wanted to hear, Plácido Domingo, opened the vocal program with “Junto al puente de la peña” (Next to the rock bridge) from La Canción del Olvido (The song of Oblivion) by José Serrano. He sounded rested and his voice soared majestically over the orchestra.
Tucked away somewhere in the San Francisco Opera warehouse was an old John Cox production of Così fan tutte from Monte Carlo. Well, not that old by current standards at San Francisco Opera.
Rossini's Maometto Secondo is a major coup for Garsington Opera at Wormsley, confirming its status as the leading specialist Rossini house in Britain. Maometto Secondo is a masterpiece, yet rarely performed because it's formidably difficult to sing. It's a saga with some of the most intense music Rossini ever wrote, expressing a drama so powerful that one can understand why early audiences needed "happy endings" to water down its impact
I suppose it was inevitable that, in this Britten Centenary year, the 66th Aldeburgh Festival would open with Peter Grimes.
Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Garsington Opera at Wormsley isn’t Mozart as you’d expect but it’s true to the spirit of Mozart who loved witty, madcap japes.
What a pity! On a glorious — well, by recent English standards — summer’s day, there can be few more beautiful English countryside settings than Glyndebourne, with the added bonus, as alas much of the audience appears to understand it, of an opera house attached.
Described by one critic as “cosmically gifted”, during her tragically short career, American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson amazed and delighted audiences with the spellbinding beauty of her singing and the astonishing honesty of her performances.
“I wrote it almost without noticing.” So Verdi declared when reminded of his eighth — and perhaps least frequently performed, opera, Alzira. One might say that, since he composed the work, no-one else has much noticed either.
Just when you thought the protagonist was Hoffmann! Who, rather what stole the show?
When is verismo verily veristic? Or what is a virginal girl dressed in communion white doing in the two murderous acts of the Los Angeles Opera’s current production of Tosca? And why does she sing the shepherd's song?
Wagner’s Lohengrin is not an unfamiliar visitor to the UK thanks, in the main, to Elijah Moshinsky’s perennial production at Covent Garden.
Philip Glass's The Perfect American at the ENO in London is a visual treat, but the libretto is mind-numbingly anodyne.
Jonathan Dove's Mansfield Park, with libretto by his regular collaborator Alasdair Middleton, has the remarkable distinction of being the first completed operatic adaptation of any Jane Austen novel to be staged.
London’s two principal opera companies have offered a baffling near-silence as their response to Wagner’s two-hundredth anniversary.
If a recent trio of musically superlative performances at Canadian Opera Company is indicative of their norm, the casting director should get a hefty bonus.
Just when you imagine you’ve got the operatic time-line fixed in your mind in a clean sweep of what goes where and when and how, you hear another work from another forgotten corner of the repertory that upends one’s conclusions.
Nothing inspires fable quite like defeat. The great riddle of Spanish history is how the Christian Visigoths managed to lose the Iberian peninsula to the Moors in one small battle in 711 and took eight hundred years to get it back.
![David Daniels as Oberon and Esteban Andres Cruz as Puck [Photo by Dan Rest courtesy of Lyric Opera of Chicago]](http://www.operatoday.com/MSDN_Chicago_03.gif)
In a seamless realization with an ideal cast Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrates the magical antics and foibles of both human and fairy in its premiere production of Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
From the first sounds of the string introduction to the final leap of Puck into a stage gone dark not a moment of Britten’s score is neglected in a well-thought match of music and drama. Leading the realm of fairies as King and Queen David Daniels sings the role of Oberon and Anna Christy that of Tytania. The mortal lovers who interact with the figures of the other world and play out their own sets of problems are performed by Elizabeth DeShong and Shawn Mathey as Hermia and Lysander, and by Erin Wall and Lucas Meachem as Helena and Demetrius. The amateur group of actors, led by the Bottom of Peter Rose, works well as an ensemble in this production and gives yet a third dimension to the strivings and complications of the personalities enmeshed in supernatural and human squabbles. In a significant debut at Lyric Opera, Rory Macdonald conducts the score as a moving canvas with the varying elements coalescing into a unified whole.
Elizabeth DeShong as Hermia and Shawn Mathey as Lysander
In this production, where successive locales and scenes in the forest drift
from one to another, the first two acts are performed as a continuum without
intermission. Once the orchestral introduction begins, the wavering string
themes are paired by an undulating sash hanging across the stage bathed in an
aqua light. The sash will also move vertically during individual scenes to
envelop and to reveal characters and their entanglements. Around the sides of
the stage cloth panels in shades of woodland green are occasionally
illuminated, so that the fairies’ movements are witnessed as if through
an arbor. At the opening those fairies, performed by the Anima-Young Singers of
Greater Chicago, welcome Robin Goodfellow, or Puck. This speaking role, played
throughout the production with great physical and thespian agility by Esteban
Andres Cruz, leads now into the arrival of Oberon and Tytania. As both give
vent to their disagreement over supervision of an Indian boy, the vocal
embellishments so effectively employed by Ms. Christy and Mr. Daniels mirror
their growing agitation. The words “Spring” and
“Summer” receive such decoration followed by Ms. Christy’s
downward runs on the word “mortal,” when she describes the Indian
boy’s heritage. Mr. Daniels sings the countertenor part of Oberon with
graceful ease, especially impressive and secure as he moves toward middle and
low notes and layers these with dramatic import. Once the Queen departs, Oberon
negotiates with Puck on finding an herb with magical properties to be used
against Tytania. The suspended basket in which Oberon has delivered his royal
instruction moves upward, so that the empty stage can welcome the mortals
fleeing Athens.
Lucas Meachem as Demetrius and Erin Wall as Helena
In their roles as the young lovers the two pairs appear — as distinct
from the otherworldly characters in the forest — in casual dress
reminiscent of the 1950s. Both pairs are distraught on varying grounds.
Lysander and Hermia form a vocal unity against the court which stands in
opposition to their love. In this, Ms. DeShong and Mr. Mathey express their
affection with pathos and sincerity in the duet with repeated “I swear to
thee.” Their plans are, at first, as neatly arranged as this vocal
harmony. This initial set of lovers gives way to Demetrius and Helena,
Demetrius in pursuit of Hermia yet himself being pursued by Helena. Once Oberon
witnesses the agitated relationship of the second pair, he resolves to
intercede and cause Demetrius to return the love of Helena by having Puck drop
essence of the magic herb in the man’s eye. In his aria “Welcome
Wanderer” Mr. Daniels sings lush, varying scales on
“eglantine” when describing to Puck both the plan for Demetrius and
his intentions for Tytania. After an interlude in which the rustic players
march through the forest and announce their forthcoming comedy of Pyramus
and Thisbe both pairs of lovers return. At first Lysander and Hermia
exchange emotional vows, Mr Mathey communicating his devotion with touchingly
expressive high notes. Puck distributes the herb to the wrong man, so that
Lysander transfers his affections to Helena who immediately takes flight. Once
the stage is again cleared of the lovers, Tytania enters accompanied by her
fairies, whom Ms. Christy addresses with ardorous melismas sung on
“quaint spirits.” As she falls asleep the fairy youth assigned to
guard her and the Indian boy also succumbs to slumber. Puck is able to take
away the boy and Oberon applies the magic herb to the Queen.
Highlights of confusion in the next part, corresponding to the second act, include the further rehearsals of the actors and the quarrels of the perplexed and divided lovers. When the rustics confront Bottom who has been turned into an ass by the amused Puck, they scatter in fear. Both groups of lovers re-enter and argue fiercely, the men exchanging fists and the women likewise hurling insults at each other. Here Ms. Wall as Helena stands out as she sings of past “friendship warbling of one song,” while decorating her words to mimic a warble. In the meantime Tytania has fallen in love with Bottom thanks to the machinations of Oberon and Puck with the magical herb. The Queen and her companion sleep in her bower beneath the undulating sash as the lovers enhaust themselves in quarrel and disappear. Oberon now scolds Puck for having administered the herb to the wrong lover, in this production the punishment emanating from the King’s hands as he matches movement to music. Puck is charged with recalling the lovers individually and with releasing Lysander by a further dose of the herb. As the act closes, the lovers all sleep and Tytania remains enamored of Bottom in her dream.
Anna Christy as Tytania and Peter Rose as Bottom
The final act in its two scenes sets the fairy rulers and the earthly lovers once again “in amity.” As a means of celebrating by public event the rustics ultimately perform their play before the royalty of Athens and weddings ensue. In the first scene Tytania awakes and recounts what she presumes to have been a dream. When Oberon directs her gaze to the sleeping Bottom, she reacts in astonishment but is then reconciled to her King. As she follows Oberon’s suggestion and declares “Music, ho…” in order to foster sleep among the mortals, Ms. Christy’s voice gleams in decorative gesture just as Bottom is again restored to human form. Once the lovers awake, Demetrius is able to declare that he has “found fair Helena like a jewel,” hence preparing for an amicable resolution among the four. Mr. Meachem’s pronouncement is signaled by imbuing his voice with a warm, lyrical tone as he sings together with the others in a harmonious round. Both pairs are forgiven by the royal couple Theseus and Hippolyta as they prepare to watch, in the final scene, the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe enacted by the rustic players. Members of the Ryan Opera Center together with Mr. Rose present a believably bumbling rendition of the play in costumes matched to the parts they inhabit. All now married retire to sleep, as Puck delivers the final words of apology, that “Robin shall restore amends.”
Salvatore Calomino
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