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.
![Judith Howarth as Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots [Photo by Michal Daniel courtesy of Minnesota Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/1545.gif)
The 2010-2011 season for Minnesota Opera is steeped in Bel Canto opera selections, starting with Rossini’s Cenerentola this fall, currently featuring Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, and for the spring, a production of Verdi’s La Traviata with acclaimed Violetta, Elizabeth Futral.
The current production of Maria Stuarda is the company’s second installment of the Donizetti Tudor trilogy, with a production of Roberto Devereax in the 2009-2010 season.
The casting of dueling sopranos, Judith Howarth (Mary Stuart) and Brenda Harris (Elizabeth I), was spot on. Harris’ golden soprano houses a steely core, which captured both the warmth and terror of the strong-willed queen in perfect balance. Her opening cavatina and cabaletta, “Ah! quando all’ara sorgemi…Ah dal ciel discenda un raggio” boasted incredibly fierce coloratura, and ascents into the heights of her voice that both thrilled and terrified. Harris is clearly at home in the Bel Canto repertoire, though her performance with Minnesota Opera was her debut of Queen Elizabeth I in Maria Stuarda.
Michael Nyby as Lord Cecil, Elizabeth's councilor and Brenda Harris as Elizabeth I, Queen of England
Judith Howarth’s silvery, spinning soprano was a wonderful
juxtaposition to Harris’ Elizabeth. Howarth gave Maria great depth of
character, vocally with amazing vocal and dramatic finesse and flexibility. In
the finale of Act I, Howarth’s biting Italian diction and metallic high
notes struck lightning during her quarrel with Elizabeth, while her sustained
B-flat sustained over the chorus in Act III seemed to emerge out of the
ether.
Both Howarth and Harris are seasoned veterans of the Bel Canto repertory, and both approached these women with strong and meaningful dramatic and vocal choices. Tenor Bruch Sledge (Earl of Leicester) nailed Donizetti’s style musically, but his overall dramatic execution of the role paled in comparison to the two queens. Sledge was quite awkward in his Act I duet with Howarth, not connecting to her musical phrasing or even the dramatic conversation. His stage deportment was impotent, and the love triangle plot became quite implausible.
Victoria Vargas’ Anne sparked with complete ease in the coloratura and line, and infused a fullness and warmth that easily cut through the orchestration. This is certainly the best singing from this Resident Artist so far this season.
Performances: Feb. 1, 3, 5, and 6 at Ordway
Sarah Luebke