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“On the wings of song, I’ll bear you away …” So sings the poet-speaker in Mendelssohn’s 1835 setting of Heine’s ‘Auf Flügeln des Gesanges’. And, borne aloft we were during this lunchtime Prom by Louise Alder and Gary Matthewman which soared progressively higher as the performers took us on a journey through a spectrum of lieder from the first half of the nineteenth century.
From the first haunting, glistening sound of the orchestral strings to the ponderous final strokes in the score that echoed the dying heartbeats of a doomed heroine, Glimmerglass Festival’s superior La Traviata was an indelible achievement.
Though Luigi Cherubini long outlived the carnage of the French Revolution his 1797 opéra comique [with spoken dialogue] Médée fell well within the “horror opera” genre that responded to the spirit of its time. These days however Médée is but an esoteric and extremely challenging late addition to the international repertory.
Tchaikovsky’s grand opera The Queen of Spades might seem an unlikely fit for the multi-purpose room of the Pavilion on the Glimmerglass campus but that qualm would fail to reckon with the superior creative gifts of the production team at this prestigious festival.
Glimmerglass Festival has commendably taken on a potent social theme in producing the World Premiere of composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson’s Blue.
From the shimmering first sounds and alluring opening visual effects of Glimmerglass Festival’s The Ghosts of Versailles, it was apparent that we were in for an evening of aural and theatrical splendors worthy of its namesake palace.
For months we were threatened with a “feminist take” on Verdi’s boiling 1851 melodrama; the program essay was a classic mashup of contemporary psychobabble perfectly captured in its all-caps headline: DESTRUCTIVE PARENTS, TOXIC MASCULINITY, AND BAD DECISIONS.
It’s an inescapable reference. Among the myriad "Viva Genova!" tweets the Genovese populace shared celebrating its new doge, the pirate Simon Boccanegra, one stood out — “Make Genoa Great Again!” A hell of a mess ensued for years and years and the drinking water was poisonous as well.
In this era of operatic globalization, I don’t recall ever attending a summer opera festival where no one around me uttered a single word of spoken English all night. Yet I recently had this experience at the Macerata Opera Festival. This festival is not only a pure Italian experience, in the best sense, but one of the undiscovered gems of the European summer season.
Notwithstanding the cancellation of Dame Sarah Connolly and Sir Mark Elder, due to ill health, and an inconsiderate audience in moments of heightened emotion, this performance was an unequivocal joy, wonderfully paced and marked by first class accounts from four soloists and orchestral playing from the Hallé that was the last word in refinement.
Stage director Tobias Kratzer sorely tempts destruction in his Bayreuth deconstruction of Wagner’s delicate Tannhäuser, though he was soundly thwarted at the third performance by conductor Christian Thielemann pinch hitting for Valery Gergiev.
Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents opera in the 2000 quarry at St Margarethen near Eisenstadt in Austria. Opera has been performed there since the late 1990s, but there was no opera last year and this year is the first under the new artistic director Daniel Serafin, himself a former singer but with a degree in business administration and something of a minor Austrian celebrity as he has been on the country's equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing twice.
Sea Pictures: both the name of Elgar’s five-song cycle for contralto and orchestra, performed at this BBC Prom by Catriona Morison, winner of the Cardiff Singer of the World Main Prize in 2017, and a fitting title for this whole concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Elim Chan, which juxtaposed a first half of songs of the sea, fair and fraught, with, post-interval, compositions inspired by paintings.
As much as the Proms strives to stand above the events of its time, that doesn’t mean the musicians, conductors or composers who perform there should necessarily do so.
Site-specific operas are commonplace these days, but at The Octagon Barn in Norwich, Genevieve Raghu, founder and Artistic Director of Into Opera, contrived to make a site persuasively opera-specific.
Nathalie Stutzmann really is an impressive conductor. The sheer elegance she brings to her formidable technique, the effortless drive towards making much of the music she conducts sound so passionate and the ability to shock us into hearing something quite new in music we think we know is really rather refreshing. Why then did this Prom sometimes feel weary, even disappointing at times?
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer have become an indispensable presence in the contemporary opera world, and their latest premiere, If I Were You, found the duo at the very top of their game.
Santa Fe Opera continues its remarkable record for producing World (and American) Premieres with The Thirteenth Child, music by Poul Ruders, libretto by Becky and David Starobin.
Among classical music lovers, Wagner inspires equal measures of devotion and disdain. Some travel far and sit for hours to hear his operas live. Others eschew them completely.
And still they come. The opera world’s obsession with Handel’s operas shows no sign of abating. The Bavarian State Opera has, since Peter Jonas’s Intendancy, stood at the forefront of Handel staging; this new production of Agrippina was dedicated to him. As ever, I was pleased to see one of these operas for the first time in the theatre – how could I not be pleased to see almost anything in Munich’s wonderful Prinzregententheater – but again, as ever, I was left unable ever quite to put to one side the dramaturgical difficulties/problems/flaws/inadequacies. (Call them what you will.)
![Elizabeth DeShong as Rosina [Photo by Craig T Matthew]](http://www.operatoday.com/Barber-public-15146-530.jpg)
Saturday, February 28, 2015, was the first night for Los Angeles Opera’s revival of its 2009 presentation of The Barber of Seville, a production by Emilio Sagi, which comes originally from Teatro Real in Madrid in cooperation with Lisbon’s Teatro San Carlos. Sagi and onsite director, Trevor Ross, made comedy the focus of their production and provided myriad sight gags which kept the audience laughing.
Author and playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais wrote a trilogy about the Almaviva family: Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville), Le Mariage de Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), and La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother). Los Angeles Opera presented operas based on the Beaumarchais trilogy during its 2014-2015 season, but not in the order of their composition. 1786 saw the premiere of Le Nozze di Figaro, (The Marriage of Figaro) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Gioachino Rossini wrote his opera, originally entitled Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione (Almaviva or the Useless Precaution), on the play Le Barbier de Séville in 1816, and it was not until 1991 that John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, inspired by La Mère Coupable, saw the light of day.
In January, Los Angeles Opera gave us Figaro 90210, an opera that uses Mozart’s music but has an updated take on the libretto. Angelinos saw the premieres of The Ghosts of Versailles and The Barber of Seville in February and will see performances of The Marriage of Figaro in March and April.
René Barbera as Count Almaviva
Saturday, February 28, 2015, was the first night for Los Angeles Opera’s revival of its 2009 presentation of The Barber of Seville, a production by Emilio Sagi, which comes originally from Teatro Real in Madrid in cooperation with Lisbon’s Teatro San Carlos. Sagi and onsite director, Trevor Ross, made comedy the focus of their production and provided myriad sight gags which kept the audience laughing.
Dancers and supers pulled Llorenç Corbella’s lightweight, light colored scenery around the stage as part of Nuria Castejón’s inventive choreography. Numerous dancers who served as townspeople and servants were part of every scene, which gave this Spanish production a particular Flamenco ambiance. As was true of the rest of the visual aspects of the show, Renata Schussheim’s costumes were black and white for all but the colorful finale in which Count Almaviva and Rosina wear bright pink for their departure in a magnificent hot air balloon.
Tenor René Barbera was a lighthearted Count who sang with the utmost in precise coloratura. Elizabeth DeShong is new to Los Angeles, but she has already sung major mezzo-soprano coloratura roles at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan and the Vienna State Operas. The possessor of a distinctive timbre, her waves of vocal color filled the hall with beauty. Baritone Rodion Pogossov, who was the Papageno in Los Angeles Opera’s 2013 presentation of The Magic Flute, was a robust Figaro who convinced the audience that his presence was irreplaceable.
Finale: Elizabeth DeShong as Rosina, and René Barbera as Count Almaviva, are about to take off in the balloon
Alessandro Corbelli was a blustering Doctor Bartolo while Kristinn Sigmundsson was a conniving Don Basilio whose "La calunnia è un venticello" showed the dark toned resonance of his huge bass voice. Lucy Schaufer was a most amusing Berta, Jonathan Michie an energetic Fiorello, and Frederick Ballentine an enormously nervous sergeant. Chorus Director Grant Gershon’s men sang with alacrity and moved so well that it was hard to tell them from the dancers.
Tamara Sanikidze, who played the accompaniment for the recitatives on the fortepiano, shaped every phrase with taste. Conductor James Conlon mentioned in his pre performance lecture that the production of this Rossini opera he saw as a young boy influenced his decision to spend his life in music. On this evening he imbued the instrumental surfaces of the music with luminous subtleties while holding stage and pit together with bonds of pure musicality. Los Angeles Opera’s Barber of Seville was a treat for both eye and ear.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Fiorello, Jonathan Michie; Count Almaviva, René Barbera; Figaro, Rodion Pogossov; Rosina, Elizabeth DeShong; Doctor Bartolo, Alessandro Corbelli; Don Basilio, Kristinn Sigmundsson; Berta, Lucy Schaufer; Sergeant, Frederick Ballentine; Conductor, James Conlon; Production, Emilio Sagi; Director Trevor Ross; Scenery Designer, Llorenç Corbello; Costume Designer, Renata Schussheim; Lighting Designer, Eduardo Bravo; Chorus Director, Grant Gershon; Choreographer, Nuria Castejón; Fortepiano, Tamara Sanikidze.