![Isabel Leonard as Ada and Nathan Gunn as Inman [Photo by Ken Howard]](http://www.operatoday.com/2%20Isabel%20Leonard%20%28Ada%29%20and%20Nathan%20Gunn%20%28Inman%29%20in%20%E2%80%98Cold%20Mountain.%E2%80%99%20Photo%20%C2%A9%20Ken%20Howard%20for%20Santa%20Fe%20Opera.png)
03 Aug 2015
Cold Mountain Wows Audience at Santa Fe World Premiere
On August 1, 2015, Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Cold Mountain, a brand new opera composed by Pulizer Prize and Grammy winner Jennifer Higdon.
Excellent programming: worthy of Boulez, if hardly for the literal minded. (‘I think you’ll find [stroking chin] Beethoven didn’t know Unsuk Chin’s music, or Heinrich Biber’s. So … what are they doing together then? And … AND … why don’t you use period instruments? I rest my case!’)
On a recent weekend evening the performers in the current roster of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago presented a concert of operatic selections showcasing their musical talents. The Lyric Opera Orchestra accompanied the performers and was conducted by Edwin Outwater.
On April 6, 2018, Arizona Opera presented an uncut performance of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold. It was the first time in two decades that this company had staged a Ring opera.
The 2018 London Handel Festival drew to a close with this vibrant and youthful performance (the second of two) at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, of Handel’s Teseo - the composer’s third opera for London after Rinaldo (1711) and Il pastor fido (1712), which was performed at least thirteen times between January and May 1713.
The Moderate Soprano and the story of Glyndebourne: love, opera and Nazism in David Hare’s moving play
Well, it was Friday 13th. I returned home from this moving and inspiring British-themed concert at the Barbican Hall in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Andrew Davis had marked the centenary of the end of World War I, to turn on my lap-top and discover that the British Prime Minister had authorised UK armed forces to participate with French and US forces in attacks on Syrian chemical weapon sites.
This seemed a timely moment for a performance of Stravinsky’s choral ballet, Perséphone. April, Eliot’s ‘cruellest month’, has brought rather too many of Chaucer’s ‘sweet showers [to] pierce the ‘drought of March to the root’, but as the weather finally begins to warms and nature stirs, what better than the classical myth of the eponymous goddess’s rape by Pluto and subsequent rescue from Hades, begetting the eternal rotation of the seasons, to reassure us that winter is indeed over and the spirit of spring is engendering the earth.
This performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas by La Nuova Musica, directed by David Bates, was, characteristically for this ensemble, alert to musical details, vividly etched and imaginatively conceived.
In 1969, Mrs Aristotle Onassis commissioned a major composition to celebrate the opening of a new arts centre in Washington, DC - the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, named after her late husband, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated six years earlier.
This is a landmark production of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) conducted by Ingo Metzmacher in Amsterdam earlier this month, with Dale Duesing (Charon), Bo Skovhus and Lenneke Ruiten, with Cappella Amsterdam, the Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderen Jeugdkoor, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, in a powerfully perceptive staging by Romeo Castellucci.
This was the first time, I think, since having moved to London that I had attended a Bach Passion performance on Good Friday here.
It was a little early, perhaps, to be hearing ‘Easter Voices’ in the middle of Holy Week. However, this was not especially an Easter programme – and, in any case, included two pieces from Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Good Friday. Given the continued vileness of the weather, a little foreshadowing of something warmer was in any case most welcome. (Yes, I know: I should hang my head in Lenten shame.)
‘In order to preserve the good order in the Churches, so arrange the music that it shall not last too long, and shall be of such nature as not to make an operatic impression, but rather incite the listeners to devotion.’
The white walls of designer Peter McKintosh’s Ikea-maze are still spinning, the ox-skulls are still louring, and the servants are still eavesdropping, as Fiona Shaw’s 2011 production of The Marriage of Figaro returns to English National Opera for its second revival. Or, perhaps one should say that the servants are still sleeping - slumped in corridors, snoozing in chairs, snuggled under work-tables - for at times this did seem a rather soporific Figaro under Martyn Brabbins’ baton.
Time was I could hear the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge almost any evening I chose, at least during term time. (If I remember correctly, Mondays were reserved for the mixed voice King’s Voices.)
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s innovative, new production of Charles Gounod’s Faust succeeds on multiple levels of musical and dramatic representation. The title role is sung by Benjamin Bernheim, his companion in adventure Méphistophélès is performed by Christian Van Horn.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play of the night: of dark interiors and shadowy forests. ‘Light thickens, and the crow/Makes wing to th’ rooky wood,’ says Macbeth, welcoming the darkness which, whether literal or figurative, is thrillingly and threateningly palpable.
Daniel Catán’s widely celebrated opera, Florencia en el Amazonas received a top tier production at the wholly rejuvenated San Diego Opera company.
Four singers were awarded prizes at the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup, which reached its closing stage at Glyndebourne on 24th March. The Glyndebourne Opera Cup focuses on a different single composer or strand of the repertoire each time it is held. In 2018 the featured composer was Mozart and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment accompanied the ten finalists.
It’s sometimes suggested that it was the simultaneous decline of the popularity of Italian opera seria among Georgian audiences and, in consequence, of the fortunes of Handel’s Royal Academy King’s Theatre, that led the composer to turn his hand to oratorio in English, the genre which would endear him to the hearts of the nation.
On August 1, 2015, Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Cold Mountain, a brand new opera composed by Pulizer Prize and Grammy winner Jennifer Higdon.
The librettist was Gene Scheer who wrote texts for Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick as well as Tobias Picker’s Thérèse Raquin and An American Tragedy. Scheer based his libretto for Cold Mountain on Charles Frazier’s historical novel of the same name. Higdon has successfully redirected her formidable efforts from the symphony to the theatre, and in doing so has produced a most memorable first opera. Not only do her vocal lines underline the personalities of each character, they are melodic, witty at times, and generally reflect the time and place of the setting.
Although director Leonard Foglia told his tale with occasional flashbacks, the action generally surged forward to capture the emotional punch of the novel. Robert Brill made his scenic design of dark boards juxtaposed at various angles. With the addition of Brian Nason’s lighting and Elaine J. McCarthy’s projections, they could be made to resemble land, sea, and the star-filled sky. David C. Woolard’s costumes were accurate as to time and place.
Ensemble cast
Baritone Nathan Gunn sang the leading role of W. P. Inman, a wounded infantryman who deserts the Confederate army in an desperate effort to make his way back to Ada, his beloved. Gunn’s large, warm, resonant voice endeared him to listeners from the very beginning of the opera and the audience felt a loss when he died. As Ada, Isabel Leonard was a well brought up young lady who, in Act I, had no knowledge of how to survive in wartime. Her light, lyric mezzo-soprano voice denoted her youth and occasional exuberance, but it was not until the second act that she solidified her portrayal. It was the darker-voiced mezzo-soprano, Emily Fons, who created an immediately recognizable character in her depiction of the edgy, strong-willed Ruby. With golden sounds that included an opulent mid-range, she sang that her only teacher was hunger while she taught Ada how to live off the land and plan for a Spartan future.
Many artists portrayed smaller parts in this panoramic opera. Kevin Burdette was a notable blind man and a selfish deadbeat dad. Roger Honeywell gave a nuanced dramatic performance as Veasey, whose boat seemed to capsize in the air, dumping him and Inman into the dark of night. As Lucinda, whom Inman found hunting for valuables on the bodies left to rot on the battlefield, Deborah Nansteel sang with formidable vocal power while expressing the desperation of a runaway slave.
Emily Fons as Ruby and Jay Hunter Morris as Teague
Although tenors are usually heroes who get the girl, Teague, sung with great gusto by heldentenor Jay Hunter Morris, was a murderous villain who continually tried to cause trouble for anyone who did not support ideas of the Confederacy. Morris proved to be a singer whose bronzed tones could enchant an audience while they resonated with evil. Surprisingly, in the end it was not Teague who killed Inman, it was the young boy he had trained to carry on his violent work.
Some of the music of Cold Mountain hit the audience directly in the solar plexus. One of its most stirring moments took place when the dead soldiers who said they had long been forgotten, rose from their graves to tell the audience what they died for. Chorus Master Susanne Sheston’s male apprentices sang with nuanced dramatic power:
“Buried and forgotten
In our beautiful country
Where we lie buried We rest beneath every step you take,
In the dust, in the ground on which you tread.”
Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya led an orchestra of interesting proportions that offered pungent harmonies and displayed an enormous tapestry of musical color thanks to the inclusion of considerable brass and percussion. Currently, the opera is being recorded by the Dutch label, PentaTone. Since Cold Mountain’s five scheduled Santa Fe performances sold out early, a sixth one has been added.
Maria Nockin