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.
![Gerald Finley as Don Giovanni and Katarina Karnéus as Donna Elvira [Photo by Mike Hoban courtesy of the Royal Opera House]](http://www.operatoday.com/DON_GIOVANNI_10200_0165.png)
Introducing the winter-spring season, ROH Chief Executive Tony Hall explains the (perhaps a tad spurious) Olympic ‘concept’ which has inspired the season’s programming, the five interlocking rings of the Olympic insignia motivating the performance of a series of works staged in ‘cycle form’.
Thus, having kicked off in autumn with Puccini’s triptych, Il Trittico, we now have a triple dose of Mozart-Da Ponte, beginning with that delicious blend of the dissolute and the delectable, flavoured with a dash of the supernatural that, mimicking its slippery ‘hero’ himself, so often evades the directorial grasp: Don Giovanni.
Francesco Zambello’s staging, first seen in 2002 and revived several times since, is certainly full of fire, nowhere more so than in the final scene when flames literally threaten to lick the curtains and engulf the auditorium. But, although the ‘dissolute one’ is ultimately punished, this opera is about more than simply a ‘just’ meting out of hellfire and damnation; it is a ‘dramma giocoso’, and getting the right balance between menace and mischief, between horror and humour, is a tricky task.
Hibla Gerzmava as Donna Anna
Maria Bjørnson’s sets certainly tend towards the dark and dispiriting: a steely, curved wall suggests a suitably sepulchral edifice, festooned with crucifixes. Aloft perches a brooding, kitsch Madonna; it glowers judgmentally upon the degenerate goings-on, later prompting both a sacrilegious outburst from the frustrated sinner and a sentimental serenade from Don Ottavio. The ugly vertical construction revolves at the end of the first act to reveal a painted perspective of a grand banqueting hall, effectively transposing us from an abstract age scattered with assorted period allusions, to an unambiguous eighteenth-century Spain. By the beginning of the second act, the wall has crumbled into a pile of bricks and rubble.
This rather unappealing visual design is enlivened by the striking costumes whose deep, rich hues evoke the intense, contrasting palette of Goya, and integrate class signifiers and moral codes. The aristocrats sport royal blue and noble purple, while the peasants are dressed in simple (‘pure’?) white frocks; Don Giovanni is cloaked in crimson, as are his servants, excepting Leporello whose shabby, grey attire reflects the seediness and squalor of his existence.
Zambello’s ideas, though at times original and interesting, do not always add up to a complete whole; but if the show ‘works’, it is largely due to the musicality and muscularity of Gerald Finley as the eponymous philander, by turns imperious and charming, threatening and mesmerising. He is self-knowing but never self-pitying. Strikingly swathed in scarlet, from the first Finley is ruthless and dangerous, recklessly slaying the Commendatore, and later assailing Masetto with malice and spite. But, such viciousness is forgotten in a flash, as his voice enchants and allures. It is obvious why Zerlina submits so willingly, for ‘La ci darem’, like the subsequent Canzonetta, ‘Deh vieni alla finestra’, is breathtakingly sweet. Although we can see that the Don is oblivious to everything but his own satisfaction — sexual, gastronomic and material — Finley’s audacity, self-belief and independent spirit thrill us just as much as his vocal powers.
Matthew Polenzani as Don Ottavio, Hibla Gerzmava as Donna Anna, Marco Spotti as Commendatore
It is fitting that, following the ‘victors’ moralising fugato, it is the scorching silhouette of the wrong-doing reprobate bearing aloft a naked woman, anticipating continuing gratification, that is the image that brings down the final curtain; for it is Finley who has monopolised our attention and interest throughout. It is an image that neatly captures the irony that Mozart and Da Ponte surely intended, and the ambivalence that the score and libretto constantly declare.
Finley’s Leporello, Lorenzo Regazzo, could not match or, more appropriately, complement and counterpoise, his master’s dramatic or musical stature. In a disappointingly low-key performance, Regazzo’s fairly insubstantial bass offered neither comic capers nor buffo vengeance. There was much shoulder shrugging and miserable moping, but the catalogue aria was disappointingly dull — even Elvira looked bored, as she drifted about, disengaged and disinterested in the servant’s notebook flinging. However, Regazzo did perk up for the mock seduction of Elvira, enjoying his role-swapping adventures, his excited anticipation of the joys that his master’s costume endow, quickly turning to disillusionment when he gained not gratification but grief from the vengeful wronged.
Gerald Finley As Don Giovanni, Lorenzo Regazzo As Leporello
But, underpowered vocally and dramatically, Regazzo got ‘lost’ in the chaos that concludes Don Giovanni’s party and in the final banquet scene, in which Leporello’s heartlfelt terror should serve to emphasise his master’s insouciant self-assurance, he went unnoticed.
The big surprise of the evening was Matthew Polenzani ’s Don Ottavio; this effete aristo was a far cry from the ineffectual posturer and grumbler of far too many productions. Indeed, Polenzani won the loudest applause of the night, for his pianissimo da capo of ‘Dalla sua pace’ which was truly refined.
There were strong performances too from Adam Plachetka (Masetto), a dark voiced bass-baritone of stature, and Marco Spotti, who was a commanding Commendatore.
The female leads were all making house or role debuts. Wearing a Havisham-esque gown, Katarina Karnéus was an overly melodramatic Elvira; with little help from the director, her perfectly plausible anger lacked focus, and often lapsed into deranged ranting and raving. Moreover, why is she borne in in a sedan chair? She is surely savagely incensed, rather than self-composed and sedate? Despite this, Karnéus did convincingly convey Elvira’s unpredictable mood swings: she has gloss and clarity at the top, but lacks weight and richness in lower range. And she didn’t quite have sufficient stamina, tiring in ‘Mi tradi’.
As Donna Anna, Hibla Gerzmava’s hard-edged tone was a good match for her ‘hard-to-get’ stance with Ottavio, but won her character little sympathy. Irini Kyriakidou was a mature, knowing Zerlina but, while mostly secure, she lacked variety of tone.
Zambello’s banquet scene is a mixture of the banal and the blood-curdling. There is no statue — although, puzzlingly, the chorus stand stock-still, like frozen figurines, when Don Giovanni invites his ghostly guest to dinner. Instead of an imposing effigy we have an enormous swinging, pointing finger - the hand of God, we suppose, or else that of the Commendatore himself, mocking the beguiling invitation of the Don’s seductive serenade.
Scene from Don Giovanni
While there were dazzling pyrotechnics on stage, there was disappointingly little fervour in the pit, despite the breakneck pace of the overture which promised so much. Constantinos Carydis, conducting from memory, let the momentum droop and drag, at times unsettling his soloists (even Finley, who surprisingly anticipated the start of ‘La ci darem’) and wrong-footing his chorus, who tripped and stumbled through the Act 1 finale. Carydis clearly possesses a detailed knowledge of the score but there was simply not enough attention to the overall ensemble, which was sacrificed for momentary nuances. The recitatives were enlivened by some witty continuo playing from Mark Packwood, and the ‘Girl-bands’ and other musicians at the Don’s wedding feast — playing from memory — provided impressive entertainment.
Ultimately, whatever the flaws of conception, design and performance, Finley’s masterful performance ensured a satisfying evening was had.
Claire Seymour