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.
![Alice Coote as Dejanira and David Daniels as Lichas [Photo by Dan Rest courtesy of Chicago Lyric Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/Hercules_Chicago_01.gif)
In Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Handel’s Hercules there is an undeniable interpretive strategy which prompts the viewer to consider recurring elements of human emotion, e.g. jealousy, rage, pity, among others.
Further, the setting, costumes, and gestures suggest, alternately, the concept of the hero returning from military successes and the accompanying domestic reconciliations which must also be confronted. The specific associations with modern political and military conflicts, under Peter Sellars’ direction, are, to be sure, communicated in such a way that more elemental affects predominate. Hence although some costuming is admittedly tied to recent struggles in Iraq, the resultant application speaks for universal emotions beyond any single war. This dramatic success may be ascribed in part, to the musical direction but at the same time to the extraordinary collection of vocal talent assembled for this production.
In his attempt to shape “the piece with a view to bringing Händel’s oratorio closer to Sophocles original play,” Mr. Sellars divides the work into two parts rather than three acts. The sets remain generally simple, several benches affording the performers opportunity to sit or lie while broken columns suggest a neglected domestic court. In the overture to the first part Harry Bicket led with agile tempos and managed the integration of individual orchestral sections into a seamless whole. As the first participants to appear in the initial part David Daniels as the herald Lichas and Alice Coote as Dejanira, the wife of Hercules, inhabit their roles with conviction and dignity. Dejanira enters as the colors on the backdrop of the stage change to indicate day’s arrival. She seems weary and hugs herself as if to ward off the cold, or solitude. In his comment on observing the state of Dejanira Mr. Daniels performs the first of Lichas’s solo pieces with skilled and tasteful decoration. His emphasis on “relentless” in the aria “No longer, Fate” communicates the mood of the court as mirrored in Dejanira’s gestures. Further, in his plea to Jove, Daniels uses discreet trills alternately on “the hero’s life” and “weeping wife” as a means to join or contrast the two figures musically who are kept physically apart by war. In her own self-distracted and pessimistic musing in the aria “The world, when day’s career is run,” Coote gives appropriately expressive color to low notes on “darkness” and “thickest gloom.” She sings her final lines here, in echo of the sentiment of Lichas, with decorative and emphatic trills on “absence” as key to her emotional anguish.
In the following several scenes the fate of Hercules is presented, alternately, in negative and in optimistic lights, as the remaining characters of the piece are introduced. At first, Hyllus, son of Hercules and Dejanira, vows to search for his father after he consulted an oracle that predicted death for the hero. In order to assuage his mother’s mood at this news, Hyllus swears his conviction in the recitative and heroic aria, “Despair not … Where congealed the northern streams.” In the role of Hyllus Richard Croft gave a supremely assured performance of the loyal son and future leader. His vocal embellishments, presented in the most natural manner, describe “With advent’rous steps” the path he will tread until discovering the fate of his father. As accompanied by the chorus’s thoughtfully choreographed “O filial piety,” Hyllus is on the point of leaving when Lichas interrupts with news of his master’s success. Hercules has defeated the king of Oechalia and returns with the princess as his captive. In Dejanira’s reaction, “Begone, my fears,” Ms. Coote applies excited touches of decoration on “the morning ray” and concludes with a dramatic top note at the phrase “swell my soul” to signal her recovery.
(Left to right) Alice Coote, Eric Owens, Lucy Crowe, Marckarthur Johnson and Richard Croft
In the following scene the characters Hercules and Iole, the captive princess, enter and establish their dramatic and vocal personalities. The two initial arias performed by Lucy Crowe as Iole were exemplars of character portrayal and Handelian decoration. While Hyllus looked on with growing interest Ms. Crowe performed “Daughter of Gods” with a seamless line and flute-like, rapid high notes on “a thousand graces.” Her saddened memories in “My father! Ah! Methinks I see” were equally expressive with noted ornaments touchingly applied on “Dying he bites the crimson ground.” The role of Hercules, sung by Eric Owens, remains at this narrative juncture implicitly understated. Mr. Owens communicates the introspection and detachment of the hero returned in “The god of battle quits the bloody field,” while also tracing a lyrically embellished line for the bass-baritone. From this point until the close of the first part the growing rift between Hercules and Dejanira is detailed in the latter’s reaction to Iole’s presence. As if to highlight her innocence, the aria “How blest the maid” is performed by Ms. Crowe with near pastoral effect as she uses delicate high notes with crystalline effect. By contrast, Dejanira’s anger and jealousy are expressed by Ms. Coote’s negative emphases in “Love dips his arrows … and sends them pointed to the heart.” The emotional violence implied, as well as her own reactions, is captured by Coote’s contrastive embellishments opposing her role to that of Iole. As the chorus appropriately concludes the first part of the drama, the participants remind with hushed tones that “Jealousy” is “Tyrant of the human heart.”
Just as Hercules and Dejanira stand in this production at the close of Part I at opposite sides of the stage, in order to signify their continued emotional distance, Hyllus and Iole appear together at the start of Part II. In answer to Iole’s protests that love between them cannot prosper, since Hercules slew her father, Mr. Croft expresses the growing passion of Hyllus with eloquent lyricism. His downward decorations on the first line of the aria “From celestial sets descending” are matched by embellishments in the thematic line “To taste the sweeter heav’n of love.” The following scenes signal a further separation between Hercules and Dejanira, as Coote mocks him with growing intensity in the aria “Resign thy club and lion’s spoils.” As Hercules departs for a ceremony of honors Dejanira recalls a method in her possession to restore a flagging love. The dying centaur Nessus had convinced her that his blood would revivify love gone astray. Not realizing that it is poisonous, she smears it onto a garment which she entrusts to the herald Lichas to bring as a gift to Hercules. The horrified report of Lichas ensues, in which the suffering and death of Hercules resulting from the poisoned garment is related. The hero is depicted lying on a stone slab from which Mr. Owens sings the aria “I rage” with rapid and expressive runs in the vocal line. The following two scenes bring to a dramatic and lyrical climax the sentiments defining both lead female characters. Dejanira is beset by guilt which Coote declaims with moving fervor in “Where shall I fly?” Her embellishments on the “skies” as witness to her guilt conclude with memorable dramatic high notes on “the pursuing furies of the mind.” Iole’s aria in response, “My breast with tender pity swells,” reiterates the tone of reconciliation which characterized her role in this foreign household from the start. Ms. Crowe’s simple yet decorative trills on “breast” and “pity” served as a means to deflect the harsh feelings of enmity and guilt which had preceded the demise of the hero. The final duet of love “O prince … O princess,” sung by Iole and Hyllus, brings now full circle the constellation of emotions as survivors and chorus pass the bier of honor with Hercules’s remains.
Salvatore Calomino