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.
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
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.
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.
What better way for the long-reigning director of the Vienna State Opera, Ioan Holender, to celebrate the end of his time in the post than with a lengthy gala featuring such stars as Gergely Németi, Roxana Constantinescu, Krassimira Stoyanova, and Keith Ikaia-Purdy?
Perhaps some will say, a better way would be to also have Plácido Domingo, Leo Nucci, Anna Netrebko, and Thomas Hampson, among others, and sure enough, they appear as well. Actually, the mix of performers — from the most famous names to those of aspiring stars — makes the almost four hours two-disc set of the recorded gala distinguishable from the usual gala fare strictly limited to only the most well-established of performers. Nonetheless, Deutsche Grammophon could not resist giving the set the oddly-phrased subtitle of “A Benefit Gala with Opera World Stars.”
In terms of quality, the four hours steer a very erratic course. A listless Rienzi overture opens the evening, with Zubin Mehta the first of many conductors to pick up the baton in a sort of “conductor relay race” to the podium. The editing makes it impossible to tell if the performers are presented in their true order of appearance. Antonio Pappano has the baton next in the DVD, with Plácido Domingo signing “Winterstürme.” The great tenor is not quite warmed up, but the audience is grateful for his presence anyway. For the next several selections on disc one, the gala slowly slides into effortful mediocrity, with a not very impressive Nadia Krasteva lighting no fires in “Stride la vampa,” and the cellists seen behind her appearing to be a nod away from falling asleep at their instruments. Bertrand de Billy leads a truly unfortunate Hoffmann sextet, with intonation differences reaching Schoenbergian proportions. Two selections from Così pass unmemorably in the staid professionalism of Michael Schade and Barabara Frittoli, although Angelika Kirchshlager tries to liven things up. An unquestionably elegant tenor, Ramón Vargas simply doesn’t have the tenor juice to make a chestnut like Giordano’s “Amor ti vieta” really ring out, though he is in good form later for Roméo’s “Ah! lève-toi, soleil!.”
The first glimpse of gala greatness comes when Soile Isokoski appears, with the fresh choice of Agathe’s aria from Freischtuz. With pure tone and security of intonation, this singer, who can be an unprepossessing presence, shows what true artistry can do. Thomas Quastoff also offers an unorthodox selection, from Strauss’ Die schweigsame Frau, but the pleasure in hearing this rare but quite appealing aria is qualified by concern over the baritone’s difficulty with staying in tune, especially in his lower range. Waltraud Meier almost matches Isokoski’s success with an inspired “Mild und leise,” and there are very professional turns by Leo Nucci, Thomas Hampson and Diana Damrau, who closes the first disc. Of the lesser known names on disc one, the best impression is made by tenor Saimir Pirgu, who gets one of the very few Puccini selections of the night, taking on Rinuccio’s aria from Gianni Schicchi. He just needs to secure his very top notes to have a chance at reaching “Opera World Star” status.
Disc two starts off with Vargas and then an ensemble from Die Frau ohne Schatten that rivals the earlier Hoffmann selection for dismaying group intonation. This continues to be a problem with duets from Peter Seiffert and Petra Maria Schnitzer (“O sink herneider”) and Angela Denoke and Stephen Gould (from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt). The dependable Ferrucio Furlanetto brings his King Philippe — yes, in French — to the stage. It is a great piece, but at 10 mostly somber minutes, perhaps not the best gala choice. Johan Botha seems to be a Vienna favorite, as the response to his secure but unaffecting “In fernem Land” is much more energetic than his performance. That same audience — supposedly sophisticated — interrupts Anna Netrebko’s Manon showpiece twice with applause, in the same places where audiences always do. The rest of the disc two gathers steam, with Natalie Dessay, Piotr Bezcala, and Simon Keenlyside providing real star power.
Leo Nucci leads the not unexpected finale of the closing ensemble from Falstaff, after a brief speech from the guest of honor (who also opens the program with some words). Interestingly, the preceding two selections, at least as seen on the DVD, seem to throw a dark shadow on Holender’s perspective as he leaves this major position. First we have Loge teasing the Gods as they lose their power without the golden apples in Das Rhiengold, and then Keenlyside’s Macbeth, saying farewell to “Pietà, rispetto, onore.” Intention or coincidence? Only Holender can say.
Although as seen on DVD the gala evening cannot be called a huge success, this recording has value as a document of the state of today’s “World Opera Stars” and as a place to catch a handful of very fine performances — with “rispetto” and “onore” most deservedly going to Soile Isokoski.
Chris Mullins