From around the worldIn a highly
.IN REVIEW:
FROM AROUND THE WORLD
August 2003
In a highly anticipated role debut-and in Gunter Kramer's dubious new production-Deborah Voight sings a triumphant Isolde in Vienna
INTERNATIONAL VIENNA Deborah Voigt's first Isolde was one of the most highly anticipated performances of the 200203 season. Adding to the excitement, her assumption of the role of Wagner's Irish princess at the Vienna State Opera was the occasion for a new production (seen at the premiere, May 25).
From a musical point of view, it would be difficult to imagine a more successful role debut. After some initial uncertainty, Voigt quickly found the right mix of middle and lower registers, and from then on, the top notes poured out like vocal gold, riding the crest of the Wagnerian waves. Günter Krämer's staging afforded Voigt little help in establishing a character, so she did the work herself, using clear, thoughtful diction and noble, elegant phrasing, culminating in a ravishing Liebestod. Legendary Isoldes do not spring fully-formed into a first performance, but with this triumphant outing (curtain calls went on for more than twenty minutes), one can imagine that Voigt might soon be changing her nickname from "Ariadne Inc." to "Isolde GmbH."
Thomas Moser proved a sensitive partner in his first Tristan. Comfortable with both heldentenor might and honeyed lyricism, he held one's attention throughout Tristan's long Act III monologue. As King Marke, Robert Holl (a third role-debutant) used his customary outstanding word coloration to good advantage, but his dry bass lacks the command and tonal luster to breathe life into the role's longueurs. As Brangäne, Petra Lang displayed a light mezzo that frequently fell below pitch and failed to provide a tonal contrast to her mistress. Peter Weber was a superb Kurwenal, gruffly mocking Isolde and unusually sensitive when tending to the wounded Tristan. Markus Nieminen's bright, metallic baritone made him an impressive Melot.
Though he received the largest ovation of the evening, Christian Thielemann led a disappointing performance, a fast, pedestrian reading that merely skimmed the surface of this complex score, and he frequently drowned out his singers with unrelenting fortes. The usually magnificent State Opera Orchestra sounded surprisingly ragged, the chorus (relegated to the wings by Krämer) muffled and uneven.
Krämer seemed determined to sabotage the opera. The Act I set (designed by Gisbert Jäkel) featured a maze of sliding-glass panels that suggested a trendy restaurant or the lobby of a modern office building more than a ship at sea. In a supremely wrongheaded bit of stage business, Brangäne dominated the exchange of death drafts by hovering in the background, grabbing Tristan's cocktail when no one was looking, dumping the poison and quickly refilling his glass with her elisir d'amore. As Isolde attempted to take a sip, Brangäne hurled herself on the glass, garnering open laughter from the audience. Though the ocean was absent from Act I, churning waves were projected on the Act II set, which appeared to be Isolde's Fire Island beach house. Isolde engaged in a bit of inexplicable choreography with Melot, then stood beside Tristan downstage-center, motionless and in near-total darkness, as a curtain descended, then rose to reveal a slightly altered configuration of scenery, featuring wooden cutouts of what may or may not have been trees. As Marke's monologue wore on, Isolde was flat on her face and remained motionless. All semblance of intelligent staging disappeared by the final act, not even affording the cast the dignity it might have found in a concert performance.
Each time Krämer appeared during the marathon curtain calls, he was greeted by a tidal wave of boos from an overwhelming majority of the audience. As much as the night belonged to Voigt, Krämer spoiled the party. Voigt, her colleagues and her public deserve better.
LARRY L. LASH
MADRID A century ago, nationalistic operas were in vogue -- with each composer exalting the virtues of his own nation. One exception is Isaac Albéniz's Merlin, which opened at the Teatro Reál on May 27 in what is believed to be its first complete staging. Admired mainly for his Suite Iberia for piano, which depicts the Spanish regions he loved, Albéniz (18601909) would seem a most unlikely English composer. Yet at the time of his death, he was working on an ambitious Arthurian trilogy, Merlin, Launcelot and Guenevere. (He completed the first and started the orchestration of the second.) The composer managed to live most of his mature years free from financial worries because of a Faustian contract he signed with dilettante banker Sir Francis Burdett Money-Coutts, which left him secure but required him to work exclusively on setting texts by his patron. Conductor José de Eusebio has made it his mission to bring these works to light. He has recorded Merlin (with Plácido Domingo and Carlos Alvarez, Decca 467096) and Henry Clifford (also with Alvarez, Decca 473937) and brought Merlin to the Reál as the centerpiece of his efforts.
The music of Merlin is very uneven, suffering from the lack of a defined language and character, though it contains strokes of true genius. Albéniz tries hard not to sound Spanish, yet in one of the score's finest moments, the ballet in Act III, he cannot help but use an Andalusian flavor to convey erotic tension. De Eusebio conducted eloquently. The heroic passages had brio, and the lyric ones sounded smooth and soft; the Wagnerian-scaled orchestra didn't drown out the singers.
The Reál compensated for Albéniz's lack of "Englishness" and for Money-Coutts's wooden, sometimes childish verses with a mostly idiomatic cast. Baritone David Wilson-Johnson was a competent Merlin in the British tradition of good acting and effective singing. Australian tenor Stuart Skelton made good use of heldentenor energy and a robust upper register to portray a heroic King Arthur. Californian Carol Vaness, as Nivian, Merlin's Moorish slave, produced the evening's most beautiful, compelling singing, though her character made little sense. Veteran dramatic soprano Eva Marton, a favorite in Spain, played the evil Morgan le Fay with passion and conviction. She can no longer sing young princesses, but she cannily used even her wide vibrato and occasional coarseness to create an almost tender sorceress.
As for the staging, director John Dew chose a symbolic reading of the myth, mixing Lord of the Rings costumes with Star Wars props, such as the luminous red circle that surrounds Merlin's huge magic wand. With a libretto so clumsily written and a score that can't always cover over the plot's defects, visuals are vital. Dew ensured that there was always something interesting to look at. Eduardo Bravo provided excellent lighting effects. The final applause sounded part hearty, part dutiful. Merlin deserved such a first-class production, though the score seems unlikely to fulfill de Eusebio's prediction, in his program note, that this opera will take its place among the classics of its time.
ROBERTO HERRSCHER
LONDON First staged by the Paris Opéra in 1868, Ambroise Thomas's five-act Hamlet was a fairly regular visitor to the Covent Garden stage in the late-nineteenth century, when audiences could hear Charles Santley in the title role and (later) such divas as Nellie Melba and Emma Calvé as Ophélie. It was last given there in 1910, but Thomas's score has enjoyed something of a revival in recent decades and now seems more often encountered than his greatest success, Mignon. So its return to the Royal Opera House, in a new production by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, with their regular design team of Christian Fenouillat (sets), Agostino Cavalca (costumes) and Christopher Forey (lighting), was both timely and welcome. The production (seen May 20) starred Simon Keenlyside as the moody Dane, with Natalie Dessay making a belated house debut as Ophélie.
Hamlet is a well-made opera, constructed on the most substantial scale, replete with all the Parisian grand-opera trimmings. A highly experienced composer, aged fifty-six when the work first was produced, Thomas knew his craft thoroughly, and a few extra tricks besides. The score contains conventional passages, but much of it is achieved with dexterity and a high degree of finish. It's an enjoyable piece, provided one doesn't insist that Thomas match the complexities and depth of Shakespeare's play, in the way that Verdi miraculously managed to do with Otello. (Royal Opera used Thomas's original ending, in which Hamlet survives and is crowned king of Denmark.)
Codirectors Caurier and Leiser are a highly gifted duo whose work regularly searches out the tensions implicit in a piece and presents them clearly and emphatically, with a refreshing avoidance of irrelevant additions. This was a gripping evening, partly due to the concentrated interaction of the principals and a vivid use of the chorus, but also on account of some exceptional singing, especially in the two leading roles. Keenlyside's versatile baritone achieved every requirement of the score. He was bold, persuasive, vehement and uncertain by turns, finding in Thomas's notes many nuances of meaning. A remarkable actor, lithe and purposeful in his every movement, he articulated the text with detailed engagement and proved in every sense a Hamlet worthy of the British stage.
As Ophélie, Dessay reaffirmed her credentials as one of the leading coloratura exponents of the day. Not only was she faultless in her execution, but she sang every last filigree phrase with musical and dramatic conviction. She created a heartrendingly vulnerable figure, whose descent into an interior fantasy world was terrible to behold. Her mad scene offered profound pathos and a genuine sense of terror, and she quite rightly received an ovation.
This top-quality central pairing was well supported by Yvonne Naef, a grandly pungent Gertrude, riddled with guilt, and by Robert Lloyd's enclosed, uneasy Claudius. Yann Beuron, though ill at this performance, managed to get through the role of Laërte. Louis Langrée conducted with a highly developed sense of style, giving full value to the grand-opera panoply of the public scenes and drawing out the darkness of much of the rest. Though many turned out expecting to laugh at Thomas and his presumption, they stayed to cheer the work's surprising vitality and validity.
ENO is tackling Berlioz's mighty epic The Trojans in two parts -- an arrangement with plenty of precedents, though scarcely one the composer would have viewed as ideal. The first segment, The Capture of Troy, proved controversial if exciting music theater at its premiere at the London Coliseum in January [see opera news, April 2003]. Opening on May 8, Part II, The Trojans at Carthage, also was directed by Richard Jones, but this time John Macfarlane was designer (Stewart Laing was assigned only the first part).
The second installment proved altogether less effective than the first. Berlioz wrote a prelude to be performed before these three acts when they (the only part of this opera to be heard during his lifetime) were given their premiere at Paris's Théâtre Lyrique in 1863, but that prelude wasn't played here. ENO music director Paul Daniel, a variable quantity who breathed some fire into Part I, seemed less at home with the more sensual yet more massive vistas of Part II. His reading of the score sounded ponderous. Neither Susan Parry (Dido) nor John Daszak (Aeneas) revealed the grandeur, vocal or visual, to represent two such powerful characters. Daszak's underpowered tenor lacked heroic ring. He got through all the big scenes without embarrassing himself, but he was never exciting. Parry's medium-weight mezzo sounded more mellow than it has on other occasions, but her range of color is rather small to convey the wide range of emotions felt by a character who opens her wary heart to passion and is destroyed by her lover's desertion. But then, Jones's production scarcely allowed these singers to rise to epic heights.
Dido was costumed in a simple black frock and surrounded by Carthaginian subjects in leisure wear, with open-neck shirts and pastel colors to the fore. They looked like the employees of a computer-software company. In the grand celebratory scene, in which processions of builders, sailors and farmers enter and are awarded trophies by their queen, there was just a single representative of each group. During a lengthy pantomime, a sizable model of Carthage was assembled as a sign of the city's achievements; there was a running joke about one poor individual constantly attempting to plant his tiny tree on a hill, and every time being frustrated. Jones's economical but ultimately reductionist approach undercut the audience's awareness of the grand imperial dreams that play such a significant part in the piece. In Part I, Jones and Laing came up with imagery that suggested contemporary global politics; here, the staging seemed to settle for post-modern irony. Berlioz had an altogether grander, more intense vision, aligning human aspirations with tragic emotions. Throughout, Jones moved the chorus in and out of striking visual positions.
This was the last new production to be staged at the Coliseum before ENO's home base is closed for major refurbishment due to last a year. The reopening season -- also the centenary of the theater, London's largest -- is scheduled to include a revival of The Trojans, with the two parts finally brought together. It will be interesting to see how they match up.
Jerry Springer: The Opera made a splash in Britain's popular media. It began as a small-scale "work-in-progress" at Battersea Arts Centre, then moved up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was given in concert last season. Now presented with a dozen principals, a chorus of twenty-two and a band of eight, it's evolved into an all-singing, all-dancing spectacle, officially unveiled as a "world premiere" after weeks of previews at the Lyttleton, the medium-sized proscenium venue of the Royal National Theatre on London's South Bank (April 29). Springer is the work of composer/lyricist Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, his collaborator on the book as well as the production's director.
Lee offered a vital, over-the top staging of what is essentially a musical that uses operatic devices to satirize and celebrate the whole genre of trash television and its real-life high priest, whom Michael Brandon impersonated with a blend of semi-fake charm and non-judgmental good nature. The character doesn't sing; neither does Steve (Guy Porritt), his security man. Everyone else does, most memorably the guests, whose let-it-all-hang-out monologues are turned into arias.
There were even more four-letter words than are heard on the real TV show, the standing joke being that something is more shocking when sung than spoken. The high-octane production never let up in its first half, during which Springer's "studio audience" howled and bayed through a succession of sexual and emotional confessions. A climax of debauched brilliance was reached with the arrival of a troupe of cavorting Ku Klux Klansmen, in an Act I finale of riotous bad taste worthy of The Producers.
The problem, for a two-act show, was what to do after intermission. The solution didn't work. At the end of Act I Springer gets shot amid the confusion of the KKK melee. He has fired his warm-up man (David Bedella), who turns out to be the devil, precipitating an Act II confrontation in Hell involving Satan, Jesus and God, plus Adam and Eve for good measure. This proved pretentious and labored, and the show rallied only in a couple of stuck-on dance routines before the second finale.
Nevertheless, the first-night audience gave Springer a rousing reception, many joining with uninhibited gusto in ritualistic chants of "Jerry! Jerry!" The show clearly is predestined for cult status. Yet the score is meagre. Parodies of Bach and Handel are cleverly positioned, with an opening chorus referring to Bach's Passions, and another chorus, near the close, reminiscent of Handel's celebratory oratorios. But as parodies go, neither is deft. Thomas doesn't always bother to set words with the rhythmic stresses falling in the right places. Worse, there is not one genuinely memorable musical number. Arguably, the show's greatest asset is its title. Still, much of Springer is great (if foul-mouthed) fun along the way, presented with relentless chutzpah.
GEORGE HALL
PARIS The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées's new production of Rossini's La Cenerentola was directed by Irina Brook, daughter of the celebrated Peter Brook (seen May 16). Rossini's comic operas should always be fun, and Brook's production was full of witty gags and just avoided the temptations of gratuitous and too-broad humor. Brook updated the story to present times, a concept that afforded such felicitous touches as ugly sisters (Carla Di Senso and Nidia Palacios) who weren't grotesques but credible club-hopping vamps, constantly grooming themselves.
Act I opened in the "Bar Magnifico," complete with black-and-white TV and soccer posters, a fine example of Noëlle Ginefri's imaginative set designs. However, by making Magnifico a dowdy café owner, Brook undermined the humanity of the libretto's impoverished aristocrat, desperate to make a financially sound marriage for his daughters. In Act II, Ginefri's gigantic replicas of Cinderella's party shoes corresponded with the traditional French version of the story, but they downplayed the importance of the bracelet, the crucial evidence in this telling. Other minor irritations included video gags and the way the small chorus jived to Rossini's rhythmic figures. However, the fine performances Brook drew from the excellent cast largely justified her sometimes wayward concepts.
As Don Magnifico, Alessandro Corbelli bubbled with classic Italian vocal panache. The other buffo characters were equally adroit. Pietro Spagnoli (Dandini) offered singing of impeccable finesse and just the right amount of macho roughness to contrast nicely with the cool, laid-back prince of Paul Austin Kelly, whose palace was a stylish, candy-colored penthouse. Kelly was announced as indisposed; though he sang with seeming ease and finely turned phrasing, he did suffer sometimes from a lack of power. Ildebrando d'Arcangelo's comic magician Alidoro dominated the evening, with a powerful, burnished-brass voice and a wide range of comic facial expressions and double takes (which only occasionally threatened to get out of hand).
Vivica Genaux's petite Angelina was initially seen, bespectacled and frumpy, serving espressos in the café while dreamily reading glossy magazines. (In true Hollywood style, both she and the disguised prince later whipped off their glasses to reveal their true radiance.) Genaux used her light-hued voice with showstopping virtuosity in the final rondo, which energetic conductor Evelino Pidò took at a crackling pace, hardly allowing the singer sufficient time to expand her tone. Elsewhere, Pidò presided over the Concerto Köln, a Baroque ensemble, with precision and infectious vivacity.
At first, however, the period instruments were shocking: the first fortissimo chord of the overture was played not with the full resonance of a modern symphony orchestra but with the familiar clatter of a Baroque band. The initial surprise soon passed, and the playing was wonderfully detailed throughout the evening. It was interesting to hear Rossini's score drawn toward its origins rather than pushed forward to the musical language of his successors. Yet one wonders where the early-music revolution will end. Are we soon to be treated to "authentic" Verdi and Wagner?
The Châtelet's revival of Stéphane Braunschweig's 1996 production of Janácek's Jenu°fa proved one of the current season's highlights (heard May 15). This austere production (designed by the director) concentrates on the psychological truth of the characters and eschews visual distractions, the singers performing within gloweringly oppressive wooden walls. The only naturalistic element the producer retained is the mill wheel, which, like the xylophone in the score, represents the fearsome continuity of time, impressively reappearing at the climax of the infanticide scene. Braunschweig's approach requires great singing actors, and here the Châtelet came up trumps.
Leading the cast was Karita Mattila's Jenu°fa, which must rank as one of the soprano's finest interpretations. The Nordic timbre and vocal weight of Janácek's heroine seem written for this artist, who brings just the sort of textual realism to her work that the composer considered to be the window to the soul. Physically, she managed perfectly the transition from lovesick country girl, through near breakdown, to a mature acceptance of love. Gordon Gietz's feckless Steva sang and acted with white-hot energy, and in Act II he suggested a fascinatingly frosty ambivalence to the birth of his son.
Rosalind Plowright presented the Kostelnicka (the vehicle of her Met debut last winter) not as a harridan but as a proud, still-beautiful woman, whose concern for her stepdaughter was paramount, and whose desperate actions seemed, if not excusable, at least credible. She sang with rich tone that rang out with growing confidence, culminating in the Wagnerian breadth of Act II. Tenor Stefan Margita sang Laca with careful phrasing and a fresh, vibrant sound. However, his interpretation lacked the latent brutality required. Sylvain Cambreling, suggested by many as a future music director of the Opéra National, conducted a stylish performance, drawing excellent playing from the Orchestre de Paris, with particularly fine individual solos and dramatic roughness where necessary to underpin this exceptional night at the opera.
STEPHEN MUDGE
MUNICH Handelian opera has been a trademark of Peter Jonas's reign as Intendant at the Bavarian State Opera. The newest feather in the company's cap is a fully staged production of Saul, an oratorio from 1738 (seen April 28). Full of dramatic situations and confrontations, rife with conflict, its main characters all emerging as larger than life, the work seems predestined for the stage. Handel may have changed venues, but his means of expression remained operatic.
In Christian Loy's staging, the curtain opens to reveal the interior of a typical early-eighteenth-century English church. Chorus members, dressed in period costumes, are seated in neatly raked pew-rows facing the audience. At the front is a single row of chairs for the soloists, who enter in modern dress. Naturally, because they're portraying Saul's family, there are visible disagreements as to who should sit where. Lines of personal and political strife are already in place. The monarch is portrayed as a modern politician through and through, manic and jealous, insecure, ready to use any means whatever to retain his power. David, entering shyly with piano-vocal score in hand and with no place to sit, becomes at once a sympathetic figure. Idolized by the folk as well as by many in Saul's entourage and taken up at once by Saul's favorite son, Jonathan, this young hero's modesty enrages Saul. The ensuing paranoia ends up costing the monarch both throne and life.
Loy has approached his task with obvious respect for the oratorio form. He breaks down the boundary between the static/sacred and the operatic with great subtlety and enormous skill. A gradual transformation takes place, rigidity of form yielding to a flowing use of the entire "church." The chorus becomes entirely integrated into the proceedings, changing its costumes from act to act until in the final act it literally portrays the Israelites, ready again to face adversity. The obligatory hymn at the opera's finale lacks dramatic motivation, artificially changing tragedy to momentary joy. As if to underscore this contradiction, Loy offered a surprising conceptual about-face, at once visually incongruous and probably unnecessary. He left the principals in mourning but turned the chorus into a tastelessly modern-clad group of David's partisans. In a sense, David has been turned, against his will, into the equivalent of a rock star.
Conductor Ivor Bolton, musical foundation of Munich's Handel revivals, once again demonstrated his mastery, using force of personality to draw overwhelming commitment as well as near-perfect stylistic interpretation from both orchestra and soloists. Bolton's enthusiasm tends to seduce the orchestra into playing too loudly at times, but it is a price one is willing to pay.
As David, countertenor David Daniels sang the serenade "O Lord, whose mercies numberless" so sublimely that it might well have restored peace of mind to any madman; his laments in Act IV scaled the heights of true tragedy. As Jonathan, John Mark Ainsley sang with great beauty despite some voice-in-the-throat tendencies at the top of his range. Rosemary Joshua was a stunning Michal in every sense. Her pristine voice emerged clear as a bell. Rebecca Evans shone as Merab, a demanding role with a pre-echo of Mozart's Elettra. Alastair Miles mastered Saul's nervous-politico gestures (tugging his cuffs, straightening his tie), and his sonorous voice was well suited to the part. Jonathan Lemalu made an impressive debut as the Ghost of Samuel. Veteran Robert Tear was so seriously indisposed that he had to speak the role of the Witch of Endor, an example of loyalty taking precedence over good musical judgment.
JEFFREY A. LEIPSIC
MILAN Verdi's I Due Foscari may be based on Byron, but the emotional depth and range encompassed by its central character is more reminiscent of Shakespeare. The final scene in particular, in which the elderly Doge, who has just lost his only surviving son, is forced to renounce all the trappings of power, is hardly less moving in a fine performance than the culminating scenes of King Lear -- the tragedy Verdi long hoped to set to music. If the effect was less than overwhelming in the new Scala production at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi (seen May 18), it was above all because conductor Riccardo Muti seemed unwilling to face the full emotional implications of the opera, approaching I Due Foscari as if it were closer to Ernani than to Simon Boccanegra. Of course in a very real (chronological) sense it is closer to Ernani, and the thrusting brilliance he brought to the orchestral accompaniments in the strettas was undeniably striking, as was the exquisite blending of instruments during cantabile movements. Yet throughout, one sensed an underlying emotional detachment that prevented the singers from making the most moving effect they could.
In the role of Francesco Foscari, veteran baritone Leo Nucci invested all his vocal and spiritual energies, compelling the spectator to admiration despite an often unlovely timbre and a facial expression that was too much set in a mask-like grimace. The voice, however worn, projects as well as ever and thrilled the audience with its ability to dominate the loudest of accompaniments, generating theatrical electricity even where dramatic depth was lacking. Dimitra Theodossiou (Lucrezia) again proved herself a singer of considerable technical resource, who commands the stage effortlessly and phrases with impressive dynamic range, precision and beauty of tone in soft passages. Tenor Francisco Casanova tended to be dominated by the orchestra during cabalettas, but his warm, burnished lyric voice, with a secure if hardly ringing top, proved generally well-suited to the melancholy Jacopo Foscari.
Designed by Maurizio Balò and directed by Cesare Lievi, the atmosphere of the production was claustrophobic, with handsome period costumes and sets enclosed by sinister-looking windows. Nothing very original happened onstage, but the action was plausible enough, and the shallowness of certain sets helped the projection of the voices, the choral episodes proving particularly rousing.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
NORTH AMERICA ST. PAUL Minnesota Opera's production of The Handmaid's Tale, the North American premiere of Poul Ruders's widely admired new opera, brought the horrors of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel disconcertingly close to home. Heard in English, the original language of Paul Bentley's libretto (given in Ruders's Danish translation at the Copenhagen premiere, in 2000), and seen in director Eric Simonson's emphatically plausible production, Ruders's jarring, musically devastating operatic nightmare comes off less as science-fiction than as an ominous example of what lies latent and simmering all around us. For an American listener, the unfamiliarity of the Danish language enhanced the threatening quality of the Royal Danish Opera production and the resulting CD recording (Dacapo 8.224165-66) but also kept it at a safe remove. Similarly, the unnaturally bright redness of the Handmaids' hooded uniforms spoke of abstract stylization. In St. Paul, designer Robert Israel put them in depressingly drab but realistic gowns, in an indoctrination center with the kind of fluorescent lighting one might find at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Offred, the protagonist, was sung by Elizabeth Bishop, a highly accomplished but unglamorous singer, whose poignant humanity and Everywoman quality contributed further to the gnawing sense that this could happen to anybody. All of this mundanity cut to the bone.
Minnesota Opera achieved very high standards on a strictly musical basis as well. Bishop's warm, heartfelt colorings of Offred's sometimes jagged, sometimes lyrical internal monologues were offset by the riveting, high-lying vocal frenzies of Helen Todd as Aunt Lydia, the chief indoctrinator of the young Handmaids. Todd, a sweet-faced soprano, is physically unimposing, but she made it clear through her focused intensity that you wouldn't want to mess with her. As Offred's Double (her own younger self in the flashbacks to the Time Before), mezzo Megan Dey-Tóth summoned the beauty Offred yearns for through the haze of memory; she and Bishop spun floating, shimmering lines in their duet. Extended unison singing for two mezzos is a risky proposition, but Ruders's skill, the singers' sensitivity and the heartbreaking presence onstage of little Maeve Moynihan as Offred's confiscated daughter all helped make this the evening's emotional high point.
Gabor Andrasy's deep-toned Commander was a courtly gentleman -- in fascinating contrast to the monstrous society he helped create. His wife, Serena Joy, formerly a popular television gospel singer, now a limping, chain-smoking, housecoat-clad schemer, was given layers of bitterness and grim authority by Joyce Castle. Tracey Gorman brightened the stage as Ofglen, Offred's friend, who turns out to be a member of the underground resistance. Karin Wolverton's Moira offered refreshing bluntness and wry optimism.
Conductor Antony Walker and the Minnesota Opera Orchestra made much of this musically very difficult piece. Regrettably, the extended stage served as a sonic buffer to the orchestral onslaught that is Ruders's specialty. The composer's broad palette of spiky, insidious, synthesizer-enhanced timbres was always unmistakable, but the sound stopped just short of maximum dramatic impact. One shudders to think what it might have been like unfettered. An English-language recording of this deeply provocative opera, unquestionably a standout among recent contemporary works, is urgently needed.
JOSHUA ROSENBLUM
HOUSTON Audiences here offered a warm greeting to The Little Prince, Rachel Portman's first opera and Houston Grand Opera's twenty-seventh world premiere (seen June 6). Inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic children's book, Portman worked with director Francesca Zambello and playwright Nicholas Wright to craft the opera, with imaginative sets and costumes designed by the late Maria Bjørnson. The production captured the oddity, mystery and fun of the novel, balancing profundity with entertainment in a way that made it accessible to adults and children. Especially noteworthy were the humorous costumes and stage movement for the Baobabs, Hunters and the Vain Man. Portman employed a children's chorus as a means of linking the story's many episodes, and thus incorporated an element of the book's intended audience into the production, an effective means of dramatizing this decidedly unoperatic story. Portman's music was accessible and attractive and, like the book, seemed to exist on different levels. On one level it was childlike: unsophisticated, tuneful, repetitious and rhythmically "catchy" -- a kind of fantasy on British folk idioms as interpreted by early-twentieth-century British masters such as Vaughan Williams. On another level, it was hypnotic, meditative and almost trance-like. The music was serious but not pointed, an aural analogy for the book's message, which is deep without ever being entirely clear.
Portman very effectively captured moods through her music, and individual numbers had distinct, varied musical profiles. However, either by choice or through inexperience with vocal music, she often sacrificed the prosody, audibility and sense of the text to an attractive melodic line -- this despite the singers' excellent diction. This practice, although acceptable in the many arias/songs that dominate the score, weakened the punch of other passages, especially those at key dramatic moments. Fortunately, projected titles were employed to compensate. The substantial instrumental passage illustrating the Prince's love for sunsets was the most relaxed and natural musical expression of the opera.
To engage younger audiences, Portman wrote the title role for a boy soprano, and eleven-year-old Nathaniel Irvin ably handled the dramatic and vocal requirements. More childlike than regal in appearance and bearing, Irvin sang charmingly, especially in the lovely ode to the Prince's beloved Rose, one of the opera's most memorable melodies. Current and former members of Houston Grand Opera Studio sang the various characters that the Prince encountered on his travels. Among the best were Marie Lenormand, whose rich mezzo-soprano and elegant stage presence shone in the role of the Fox; tenor Jon Kolbet, who exuded sinister charm as the Snake (Kolbet also played the comical Vain Man); and tenor Scott Scully, who, as the Lamplighter, sang another of Portman's great tunes. The real vocal star of the opera was New Zealand-born baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who dominated the stage physically and vocally as the Pilot who narrates the Prince's adventures. In his main aria, a paean to flight, he mastered a challengingly high tessitura, shading each phrase artistically. Having specialized heretofore in playing flawed characters (Stanley Kowalski, e.g., at Austin Lyric Opera), here he offered an engaging portrayal of an entirely sympathetic man. He often interacted with the children's chorus, directed by Karen Reeves, which sang beautifully and moved well onstage. In the large-scale ensemble finales that ended each act, the whole cast looked and sounded fabulous. The brief opera (about two hours of music) featured the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, led by conductor James Lowe. (HGO music director Patrick Summers conducted most performances.) It is easy to imagine that this work could become a regular part of the repertory.
WALTER B. BAILEY
Nieminen (Melot), Moser (Tristan)Voigt in lobby-like set (opposite);
CHARLESTON, SCIn a world where "ethnic cleansing" has become a familiar phrase and racial hatreds run high, Spoleto Festival USA couldn't have chosen more pertinent operas for its 2003 season than Delibes's Lakmé and Handel's Tamerlano. Except for design oddities in the latter -- now customary in smaller Spoleto productions -- both stagings had a profound emotional impact.
The festival doesn't always link its two operas, but this connection was clear: in both works, cultural and religious clashes between oppressor and oppressed lead to misunderstandings, resentment and death. Both directors updated the works, Lakmé to the 1940s and Tamerlano to some unspecified, fairly recent time (the title character dressed like John Gotti), but audiences needed no reminder that they were watching people with loves and hatreds similar to their own.
An all-French team -- director Charles Roubaud, designer Bernard Arnould and costumer Katia Duflot -- set Lakmé in the last years of British rule, amid a densely realistic bamboo grove that resembled a forest prison. The updating didn't affect the atmosphere, except when the Brits drove onstage in a roadster, and it may have provided extra motivation for the Brahmin priest, Nilakantha (sung with fanatical authority by Alain Fondary). Bald-pated and dressed in white robes, he was a venom-spewing anti-Gandhi who sensed the waning of the occupying regime and was eager to expedite its demise.
Lyubov Petrova made her Spoleto debut last year as a sexy, saucy Despina, but Così Fan Tutte gave no hint of her range. As Lakmé, she provided the complete package: beauty, bearing, understated emotion, clear and elegant coloratura that never got in the way of a heartfelt portrayal. Her Lakmé was as innocent as her Despina was cunning, and the look she gave Gérald as he returned to see her die mingled surprise, resignation and bliss.
Fernando de la Mora sang Gérald with the right mixture of wonder and ardor. His solos had French delicacy, his duets with Petrova an Italianate zeal. He and Franco Pomponi (a satisfying Frédéric), played off each other like a gentler version of Pinkerton and Sharpless; despite Frédéric's warnings, Gérald never understood that Lakmé was a flower likely to die if picked by the wrong hands. Sandra Piques Eddy stood out as a rich-voiced Mallika.
Emmanuel Villaume conducted the Spoleto Festival Orchestra with sweep and tenderness that never flagged, despite the misguided decision to combine Acts I and II and to play the Act II ballet music during the set change. (The section before intermission thus ran longer than Act I of Parsifal.) Villaume's pick-up orchestra, assembled for only three weeks each year, played with unexpected skill.
Tamerlano, performed with both its intermissions intact, nevertheless came in under Handel's suggested length, due to judicious trimming of thirty minutes of music and vigorous conducting by Harry Bicket. (The absent recitatives weren't missed, but Andrew Gangestad, as Leone, lost his only aria. That would have been worth keeping.)
Set and costume designer David Zinn made superficially symbolic choices. Front- and side-curtains depicted plummeting birds; the upstage area was divided by steel rods into rectangles about the size of home aquariums. The Turkish sultan Bajazet and his daughter wore bright-hued robes, but the Tatars dressed in monochromatic business suits. Were we supposed to see the Turks as imprisoned songbirds, their beautiful plumage plucked by severe captors? In case you didn't get this rib-nudging hint, colored lights festooning the set turned an icy white as the Turks suffered in Act II, then were extinguished before Bajazet's death in Act III.
The cast needed no such help to put across the characters. This opera demands unusually high-powered singing, and three principals provided it. French countertenor Christophe Dumaux delivered his vengeance aria with jaw-dropping brilliance, speed and precision; he was a lightweight Tamerlano visually but a dominant one vocally.
As Bajazet, veteran tenor Jon Garrison didn't reveal the same fluid style, but he showed just as much fervor. His stern face resembled a Roman emperor's, making the proud sultan's suicide seem inevitable. Jennifer Dudley tossed off Irene's music with glittering assurance, keeping her hands in her pockets during her entrance aria to show that nothing could faze her. She wasn't so outraged as Tamerlano's discarded fiancée ought to be, but she had the movie-star glamour one associates with empresses.
Robin Blitch Wiper's Asteria showed less fire than one wants from Bajazet's daughter. Sarah Castle, a prisoner of sorts herself in an ill-fitting suit and ducktail haircut, seemed gloomy rather than heart-sick as Andronico, Asteria's suitor. Perhaps she realized this trouser role looks silly when the trousers come from Brooks Brothers.
LAWRENCE TOPPMAN
CHICAGO Chicago Opera Theater completed its season with an ingenious coupling of Hans Krása's Brundibár and Bohuslav Martinuº's Comedy on the Bridge, two Czech composers' one-act operas born in response to the escalating power of the Third Reich. A CzechAmerican opera, Kurka's The Good Soldier Schweik, proved extremely successful at COT a few years ago; clearly hoping for similar results, the company offered Brundibár and Comedy in a new production designed by Maurice Sendak, with translations by Tony Kushner, under Thor Steingraber's direction.
Brundibár, a children's opera, was written for and performed by a cast of children imprisoned in the Nazi detainment facility Terezín (Theresienstadt), a "model camp" designed to manipulate world opinion. In reality, shortly after the opera's performances, most of the cast and Krása himself were among almost 90,000 Jews transferred from Terezín to Auschwitz and killed. COT engaged a talented cast of Chicago-area children; Adam Benkendof and Olivia Doig portrayed the central characters, a brother and sister whose efforts to assist their sickly mother are thwarted by an evil organ-grinder, Brundibár, here played by teenager Peter Hart with a Hitlerian mustache. Rallying their neighbors, the children defeat the villain by singing more loudly than his organ plays.
Sendak's production seemed a children's book brought magically to life. (He plans to publish a picture book based on the designs.) Bathed in Joel Moritz's lighting, a kaleidoscope of shifting drops and mobile set pieces formed a pastiche of naïve village images whimsically wrought with primary colors in Sendak's inimitable style.
Musically, things were less satisfying. Krása's score, attractive and accessible, was dispatched with flair by conductor Alexander Platt. The inherent limitations of amplitude and tonal variety in children's voices, however, inevitably contributed to a vague feeling of aural monotony. Even so, Brundibár presents a touching parable of the triumph of innocence over evil, going straight to the heart as only a children's story can.
Comedy on the Bridge featured a strong ensemble of adult singers who had appeared as townspeople in the Krása, thus providing a visual link between the two works. Martinuº depicts five people who are trapped on a bridge due to the inexplicable bureaucratic policies of two nations in conflict; this absurd tale provides an amusing commentary on the moral ambiguity of war. COT favorites Joyce Castle and David Holloway brought polished vocalism to their droll portraits of a brewer and his wife. As the two young lovers, Kelli Harrington's sparkling soprano and daffy expressions joined nicely with Brian Herriott's healthy baritone. In a fun comic turn, Steven Goldstein lent his lyric tenor to Professor Ucitelli. For Comedy as for Brundibár, Sendak's designs were enchanting. (One wouldn't think it possible to make a passing bomber plane adorable, but Sendak did.) Kushner's bitingly witty translation was delivered with crisp intelligibility by the spirited cast. Steingraber's direction kept up a brilliant pace while avoiding slapstick.
Ela Weissberger, who originated the role of Brundibár's Cat at Terezín, spoke prior to select performances. The opera, she said, had brought a ray of optimism into the horror of the camp. Such optimism characterized this fine production.
MARK THOMAS KETTERSON
SEATTLE Fidelio is driven by Beethoven's passionate single-mindedness, with the music and drama hurtling forward at such a speed that one has no time to question the work's many flaws; the total experience can be a knockout. Gerard Schwarz, responsible for the thrilling musical impact of Seattle Opera's production (seen May 17), elicited some spectacular wind- and string-playing from members of his own Seattle Symphony; Richard Margison certainly intensified the evening's overall impact. In resplendent voice, the Canadian tenor sang his first onstage Florestan, producing a vast range of vari-colored tones with what seemed to be the greatest ease. It was ironic to hear him sing of his dungeon's "grauenvolle Stille" (gruesome silence) while he filled the auditorium with such sweet notes. The great arc of sound he described on the word Leiden (suffering) was almost painfully beautiful.
He seemed to bring out the best in Jane Eaglen, singing her first Leonore. She was miscast in the role, ill at ease in her extravagantly unbecoming disguise as the youth Fidelio, woefully inadequate in spoken dialogue and unpersuasive as an actor. She compensated for her deficiencies by singing much of her Act I music too loudly or softly. Even in "Abscheulicher!," her delivery lacked color and contrast-control; the audience's reception was unmistakably lukewarm. However, in the crucial Act II trio, Eaglen began to move away from her furtive Hausfrau interpretation, toward something more heroic. The voice took on brighter, yet more subtle colors as she sang alongside Margison and Kevin Langan's vocally strong, dramatically convincing Rocco.
The Seattle Opera Chorus did a superlative job as the Prisoners in the moving Act I finale and again at the end of Act II. They merited their much-applauded curtain-call. Perry L. Brown lent impressively dark-voiced authority to Don Fernando; Richard Paul Fink made a nicely nasty Pizarro. Jane Giering de Haan (Marzelline) had trouble making herself heard in some areas of the stage but carried her part clearly in ensembles. John Easterlin did sturdy service as Jaquino. Robert Dahlstrom's imaginative, techno prison sets (where a security guard stood vigil beside a bank of computer screens) and Chris Alexander's simple, down-to-earth direction worked well in Act I. But in Act II, Florestan's cell was neither claustrophobic nor dark enough; extensive stage-business with a heavy metal drain-grating, though ingenious, distracted attention from the singers. Lighting designer Alan Burrett provided a great burst of light at the opera's end -- literally dazzling, this made a happy conclusion to the season and farewell to Mercer Arena.
JOHN F. HULCOOP
SARASOTA Sarasota Opera, under artistic director Victor DeRenzi, has made a name for itself by exploring Verdi's operas; a cycle, begun in 1989, is underway, due for completion in 2013. The company has staged such works as the U.S. premiere of the French-language Les Vêpres Siciliennes and contrasted the original and revised versions of Simon Boccanegra and La Forza del Destino. The company's 2003 season focused on both versions of Macbeth, which had its premiere in Florence in 1847; Verdi rewrote it for Paris in 1865.
The latter Macbeth, which became the standard version (though often without its ballet), opened the Sarasota season in early February and was performed in repertory. At the end of the two-month season, the same cast shifted gears for a rare production of the original score (seen March 28). It was fascinating to compare the two versions. To be sure, the revival of the 1847 Macbeth would be of most interest to Verdi scholars, but the Sarasota project was more than an academic exercise. Verdi knew what he was doing the first time around, and his original version is not necessarily inferior. Because he rewrote as much as one-third of the opera with French tastes in mind, the revision can be faulted for inconsistency.
The 1847 score has a unity of style that communicates more urgency, if less sophistication. Lacking the ballet, which takes up nine minutes, and some other elements (notably Lady Macbeth's "La luce langue," written for Paris), the original is some fifteen minutes shorter than the revision. A plus is that Macbeth dies onstage, in a swordfight with Macduff, and his death aria ("Mal per me che m'affidai") provides satisfying closure. (In the revision, Macbeth dies offstage, and the opera ends with a patriotic chorus.) No wonder some directors interpolate the onstage death scene into the standard version. Lady Macbeth benefits most from the rewrite. "La luce langue" is much superior to her original aria and provides a crucial dramatic bridge between her two other key scenes, the Act I duet with Macbeth after Duncan's murder and her sleepwalking aria in Act IV.
Todd Thomas, in the title role, was warm and centered in his tone, with subtle phrasing that emphasized the introspective, almost poetic quality of the tormented king. However, his Lady Macbeth, Catherine Murphy, exhibited no such nuance, with a bloodcurdling tone that cut through the ensembles and climaxes. Verdi didn't want a conventionally beautiful soprano in this role, and in that respect, Murphy was well-suited to the job, though her high tessitura could be painfully raw, and she missed the psychological depth of the sleepwalking scene.
Thomas, Sarasota's excellent Falstaff two years ago, was too cautious on opening night. Seen later in the run, he had added more swagger to the characterization, though some strain showed in the soft, exposed legato singing that comes at the end of the long night. The highlight was, as it should be, the famous duet after Duncan's murder. Thomas and Murphy caught fire in that harrowing scene; there was a darkly palpable charge between them, winding up on an oddly conjugal note as Lady Macbeth steered her husband off to bed. Andrew Gangestad gave Banquo a powerful presence. David Corman was short on passion in Macduff's aria of grief and revenge.
DeRenzi drew a vibrant performance from the orchestra. The large chorus performed effectively as the Witches. Stephanie Sundine directed both the 1865 and 1847 stagings with vivid theatrical flair. Banquo's bloodied ghost materialized eerily in a red-draped banquet hall. Act III featured mime and ballet, choreographed by Christopher Fleming, around the Witches' steaming cauldron. With ten scenes in four acts, the dramatic momentum of the original version occasionally stalled, though scene changes were relatively swift on David P. Gordon's unit set, which featured a double raked stage. The first of two performances of the original went off without a hitch, no small feat considering that the company had been performing the revised version for seven weeks.
JOHN FLEMING
IN REVIEW ON-LINE
AUGUST 2003
INTERNATIONAL
LONDON
On April 3, English National Opera added to its repertory The Handmaid's Tale, drawn from Margaret Atwood's acclaimed novel of 1985. Composer Poul Ruders (born in 1949) shows finesse in deploying instrumental timbre and regularly striking ideas that have given his orchestral and chamber scores wide currency. His librettist, English actor/singer Paul Bentley, is an opera fanatic who has appeared in various musicals and was a highly respectable Lord Chancellor in D'Oyly Carte's Iolanthe a little while back. Handmaid was well received at its premiere in Copenhagen three years ago. ENO used the same staging but performed the work in the original English. Interestingly, a number of British critics who had praised Handmaid to the skies in Copenhagen seemed far less sure of its merits in London.
Indeed, the opera's flashback-within-flashback structure is a confusing device, and it proved hard to keep track of events. It's also a dark story, with little sense of hope, and Bentley and Ruders have been unable to give it the variety that any kind of musical theater needs. The score's best feature is the orchestral writing, in which Ruders demonstrates considerable know-how, but the vocal lines do not make the same positive impact. The drama was also impeded by the cast's poor diction.
Phyllida Lloyd's production, designed by Peter McKintosh, stressed the dehumanized nature of Atwood's tale in a sharp but icy-cold stage environment. Helen Field (Aunt Lydia), Stephanie Marshall (Offred), Stephen Richardson (the Commander) and Catherine Wyn-Rogers (Serena Joy) offered strong performances, while Elgar Howarth conducted with his usual commitment. But the opera itself was a disappointment, as cold and inhuman as the society it describes.
Royal Opera has been riding so high of late that it may be forgiven one new production that failed to hit the target. This was Verdi's Luisa Miller (seen April 22), one of the composer's earlier scores (from 1849), usually regarded as both striking in itself and a herald of later, greater things. The source is Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love, 1784), an intimate but intense drama in which love comes to a predictably unhappy end over the insuperable barrier of the eighteenth-century class divide. Unfortunately, Olivier Tambosi's staging, with gloomy, partly symbolic designs by Roland Aeschlimann, failed to articulate clearly this essential conflict of money and status. Certainly there were few visual clues that the castle of Count Walter (Ferruccio Furlanetto) was several cuts above the hut where Luisa (Barbara Frittoli) lived simply with her father, Miller (Carlo Guelfi), before the count's disguised son Rodolfo (Marcelo Álvarez) came along and turned her head. Nor did the staging present with sufficient engagement the emotional turmoil their love sets up. The result was contained and more than a trifle dull.
Frittoli, an artist increasingly moving into the Verdian repertory, clearly knew what she was doing and rose confidently to the challenges of the title role, with every note carefully and deliberately placed. Her tone was never lavish but always ample, and she brought some individual flair to her acting. So did Álvarez, a credible romantic lead with plenty of vocal energy and some allure. His was not classic Verdi singing in the Bergonzi mode, but it was more than serviceable. As Wurm, Phillip Ens, in his Covent Garden debut, supplied a vigor and bite that were lacking in Furlanetto and Guelfi's fuzzier vocalism. Even Sara Fulgoni, usually a striking artist, made little of the possibilities of Federica. Conductor Maurizio Benini ambled amiably through the score, causing it to register as a far less vital, interesting work than it is.
GEORGE HALL
ZURICH
Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Indes Galantes, a hybrid of opera and ballet, arrived triumphantly at Zurich's opera house on May 11, thanks to conductor William Christie. His renowned Choeur des Arts Florissants and Zurich's own period-instrument orchestra La Scintilla performed the work (uncut at 220 minutes) with stylistic authenticity, high-spirited élan and vocal frills. Delightful dances were contributed by the Zurich Ballet (augmented by the Zurich Juniors, the house's apprentice troupe), choreographed by the ballet's artistic director, Heinz Spoerli, who also staged the production.
Les Indes Galantes (from 173536) proved very different from Rameau's more familiar tragédies lyriques -- almost a Baroque forerunner of the Broadway musical. In a prologue, Hébé, the advocate of youth, and the warlike Belladonna argue (with L'Amour as mediator) about their conflicting stratagems, which are then enacted in love stories set in four different nations: Turkey, Peru, Persia and North America, among the native tribes. Rameau makes no attempt at local color, and Louis Fuzelier's libretto doesn't aim for ethnological authenticity; respecting this, Spoerli avoided imposing folkloric inflections on the work as he choreographed the various airs and divertissements.
There's little to connect the exotic episodes, so the creative team moved the action to the Paris World Exhibition of 1889, where far-flung nations displayed their riches in the shadow of the new-minted Eiffel Tower. This provided ample opportunities for designers Hans Schavernoch (sets) and Jordi Roig (costumes) to revel in outrageous period luxuries and visual splendors. But Christie never let one forget that the music was the raison d'être here. He presided over a cunningly paced and balanced performance, exploring and shaping its kaleidoscopic instrumental colors, and his insistence on clear textures and technical finesse paid rich dividends. This was especially so in the majestic final chaconne, based upon Rameau's famous harpsichord piece "Les Sauvages," here rescored for voices and instruments to accompany the "Dance of the Big Peace-pipe." The thirty-member chorus performed with exemplary diction and artistry.
Seventeen roles were distributed among nine principal singers, so that some appeared in multiple parts. Soprano Isabel Rey and baritone Rodney Gilfry got the lion's share, three roles apiece, to which she brought her light, silvery sheen and he his colorful vigor. Malin Hartelius was utterly delightful as Hébé and Zima, Juliette Galstian dramatically explosive as Emilie, Liliana Nikiteanu warmly pulsing as Zaire. The remaining men were Zurich's splendid discovery, tenor Christoph Strehl, promising baritone Gabriel Bermudéz, Cuban tenor Reinaldo Macias and bass Reinhard Mayr.
HORST KOEGLER
BRUSSELS
Even when the libretto and score seem weak on the page, Verdi's early operas work surprisingly well onstage, and I Due Foscari, with its gloomy atmosphere and its effective use of leitmotif, is no exception. This theatrical gem warrants more frequent performance; each of three short acts offers an effective scene for the tenor and ensembles that look forward to the psychological depth of Simon Boccanegra. The present production, at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, didn't live up to the score's potential (seen April 29).
Anne Teresa de Keersmaker, resident choreographer of the Monnaie, was in charge, directing her first "traditional" opera after a not wholly convincing Bluebeard's Castle some years ago. Keersmaeker, innovative in dance, does not reveal comparable skill in sung (or spoken) theater. It has been a long while since I have seen so much empty, characterless blocking, as if the director were afraid of stillness. One expects more sophisticated work at the Monnaie. Jan Versweyveld's sets made matters worse: an open stage with the map of Venice in gold on the floor, partly extending over the orchestra pit, destroyed the acoustic balance between singers and orchestra.
That was a pity, because musically there was much to prize, beginning with the stylish, delicate reading of the score by Brussels's music director, Kasushi Ono. Anthony Michaels-Moore portrayed the elder Foscari, Francesco, as one of Verdi's great father figures, though he was undermined by a silly costume (it isn't always carnival in Venice!) and a make-up that made him seem only a few years older than his son. The accomplished singing of Elena Prokina, a moving, subtle Lucrezia, made her duet with Michaels-Moore the highlight of the evening. As Jacopo, young tenor Cesare Catani proved less convincing; though his singing offers good raw material, he lacks the style and vocal color this late-bel canto score requires.
PAUL KORENHOF
VIENNA
We will never know quite what Mozart intended for the Singspiel called Zaide, the fifteen extant musical numbers of which represent a fragment of a longer work. The manuscript contains no overture, finale or even a title. Missing, too, is the entire spoken text, leaving only the outline of a plot, a sort of dry run for Die Entführung aus dem Serail, concerning a slave's escape from a harem with her Spanish lover. (There is even a comic basso named Osmin.)
If Hugo Weisgall hadn't already taken the title, Italian novelist Italo Calvino's performing edition of Zaide could well be called "Six Characters in Search of an Opera." A Narrator delivers exposition between musical numbers but then challenges the validity of the characters' actions, interrupting the music and ordering reprises to demonstrate dramatic alternatives. Despite bribery, double-crosses and compromises, "Who will kill whom?" can sustain only limited interest. More questions are posed than are answered, and after the final quartet, everyone simply walks off, leaving the puzzle unsolved.
At Vienna's Kammeroper, Helmut Wiesner responded to this theatrical cipher by setting it in a stylish, contemporary café (wryly designed by Christof Cremer as a continuation of the auditorium's architecture), with a waiter (actor Urs Hefti) serving beverages and narration. Seen May 3, sixty minutes of music turned into a two-and-a-half hour performance through extended, often wordless stage business. When called upon by the Narrator to participate, characters were sent downstage-center with little to do but sing with arms outstretched, roll on the floor or engage in stylized movement limited by the crowded set.
Rather than force the music to conform to a dramatic framework, perhaps we should allow Zaide to exist gracefully in its fragmentary state. The music is as fine and complex as anything Mozart had written by 1779 (one can hear the seeds of the great da Ponte operas to come), and the ten solo scenas demand a high level of musicianship. In addition to a duet, a trio and a quartet of sophisticated harmonic invention, there are two melologues, experimental devices for Mozart in which long passages of declaimed text are set against musical accompaniment. The orchestration, mostly bubbling woodwinds and caressing strings accented by sparing use of brass and percussion, could have been written by no other composer.
Anna Kovalko, a Kewpie in harem pants and turban, gorgeously spun the long line of Zaide's hit tune, "Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben," with a distinctive, endearing light soprano, and attacked "Tiger! wetze nur die Klauen" with defiant rage and solid technique. Sporting jeans and leather jacket as her lover, Gomatz, Xavier Mas employed his mellow lyric tenor with delicacy and refinement and held one's attention in his lengthy melologue. Some of the most difficult music belongs to Sultan Soliman ("Ich bin so bös' als gut" is a virtual concerto for voice and orchestra), and David Alegret sang with superb breath control in a clear, plangent tenor. Wrapped in puce leather, Markus Raab hammed it up in Osmin's sole aria, negotiating streams of fioritura marked by triplets of laughter. As the renegade Allazim, bass-baritone Johan F. Kirsten assaulted one's ears with painful off-pitch yelps and unsupported gulps and snarls. Daniel Hoyem-Cavazza drew a committed, spirited performance from the orchestra.
The best thing about Wolfgang Mitterer's first opera, Massacre (heard May 24 at the Ronacher Theater, in a coproduction of the Vienna Festwochen and Wiener Taschenoper), was that one knew exactly how long one would have to endure it. A substantial portion of Mitterer's score was taped, consisting of hundreds of digitally modified samples of instruments, animals, airplanes and voices. The live performers (five singers and nine instrumentalists, including cembalo continuo) synchronized their performance with the tape, adhering to a strict time code in the printed score and consulting digital readouts to keep their places. Bad as the idea sounds, it was worse in practice. Mitterer's musical inspiration seems to have come from spinning an AM radio dial. For one two-minute sequence, conductor Peter Rundel remained motionless, while his orchestra made as much noise as they could. There was little in the way of conventional singing, as the cast yelled, screeched and yowled. The major singing parts were given to two sopranos (one unbearably high), mezzo, countertenor and high baritone. Since the score identifies the singers only by letters -- G, C(A), xD -- rather than by character names, it was difficult to match names to voices. It was equally difficult to tell what was sung live and what was on tape.
The libretto, by Stephan Müller and the composer, is "adapted freely" from the extant fragments of Christopher Marlowe's play The Massacre at Paris, a grisly retelling of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572. The text, like the opera's title, is abbreviated, consisting of only a few dozen isolated words and sentence fragments ("Let none escape! All shall die!"), which are repeated and distorted in every possibly permutation. The narrative, such as it is, concerns the manipulative relationship between Catherine de Medici and the murderous Duc de Guise, portrayed as Catherine's lapdog.
Despite the preparation devoted to the complex, seventy-one-page score and the accompanying tape, Massacre seemed like an amateur improvisation from the 1960s. The five singers and four actors, all wearing body microphones and black, contemporary outfits, performed on a stage bare but for seven pillars that doubled as giant candles. Joachim Schlömer's busy staging employed magic tricks, a cabbage which was stomped on, then rubbed into faces, water balloons burst under clothing and simulated fellatio. The cast performed with admirable (if misguided) conviction, especially baritone Georg Nigl in a particularly gruelling assignment as de Guise. Countertenor Alexander Plust -- having had his shirt ripped off, pants pulled down around his ankles, a pillowcase thrown over his head and a black stripe painted down his back -- was then made to wander the stage for several minutes. Plust's physical attributes were considerably more substantial than the music.
LARRY L. LASH
MELBOURNE
What's wrong with making an entertainment more entertaining? When Jacques Offenbach wrote Orphée aux Enfers, he was more interested in making the Bouffes-Parisiens pay than in creating a musical masterpiece. He devised what was then a novelty and is today television's staple diet: a satire of the establishment and of contemporary society. He built on his success, producing several ever-larger versions of this masterpiece. Opera Australia's Orpheus in the Underworld (heard May 12) reflects Offenbach's attempt to prove that bigger is better -- that is, more profitable. The result, almost a grand opera, sent up the medium itself as much as it aimed at Offenbach's original targets.
Some local critics attacked the wilder aspects of director Ignatius Jones's extended drollery, but Offenbach might have approved the spectacle, if not some of the new text by Phillip Scott and Jonathan Biggins, who praised their own achievement "in terms of meter, scansion and rhyme." However, unity of music and words is essential to any opera, and the original barbs were subtler, as reflected in the score. Scott and Biggins's wit, when it sizzles, belongs to cabaret rather than comic opera; and to say Orpheus is "hung like a god" is not wit but raunch.
For once, designer Mark Thomson didn't update the action; this was a post-modern, rather than modernized, production, and the colorful costumes brilliantly exaggerated traditional fashions and images. The heavily padded, queen-sized Cupid (nicely sung by Natalie Jones) needed such prominence in her much enlarged role. Pluto (David Hobson, his fine tenor voice disappointing only in a misjudged attempt at yodelling) looked irritatingly handsome and slim as he towered on platform shoes over Jamie Allen's squat, campy Orpheus. Judges threw off their robes to reveal skimpy S & M gear around fat bellies. A resonant Mercury (Andrew Brunsden) rode a rocket-powered flying bicycle. Jones's abundant sight gags hit their mark more often than did the text.
The score lists eighteen singing characters, and the chorus took a large number of individual cameos and displayed better coordination in the dance numbers than one saw from the corps de ballet, object of running gags. Amelia Farrugia's Euridice, spared the worst excesses of Jones's staging, scored a vocal and histrionic success. As Diana, Lisa Harper-Brown, recently the company's Elsa in Lohengrin, really sang (rather than belting) the "Metamorphoses" couplets in Act II, and co-author Biggins made much of John Styx. Richard Gill conducted adequately, missing some of the necessary sparkle.
JOHN CARGHER
GLASGOW
Fresh from the triumph of its Götterdämmerung, Scottish Opera offered a new The Magic Flute at the Theatre Royal (seen May 22), with new English lyrics by Kit Hesketh-Harvey and dialogue by the director, Jonathan Moore. Unfortunately, the sung portions were cluttered with consonants, and the stresses fell all too often on the wrong syllables. Moore's dialogue was overlong and, like his production, failed to respect the different tones employed in this genre-crossing work. There's plenty of low comedy in Flute -- Papageno's scenes are full of it -- but it is not best rendered by off-color jokes delivered with self-conscious references to British television comedians. Several of Papageno's one-liners thudded into the auditorium without the slightest audience response. One hopes that Emanuel Schikaneder got more laughs back in 1791.
Nevertheless, one warmed to Ronald Wood's Papageno, if only because he clearly put such a lot of effort into it. He was partnered by the spot-on Papagena of Gillian Keith, an ideal soubrette. As Tamino, Iain Paton's lyric tenor opened out as the evening progressed, though he too plodded his way through the dialogue. Swedish soprano Marie Arnet, a stylish Mozartean, sang an assured Pamina, with fresh, shiny tone and a seamless line. Her English was perfect.
So was that of the physically imposing Latvian bass Pauls Putnins, whose Sarastro nevertheless lacked the vocal weight to give his arias effective impact. The tone was soft-grained and at times weak, with a noticeable change of color lower down. Roderick Williams gave him a run for his money as the Speaker, whose crucial scene with Tamino was delivered with appropriate resonance and gravitas. Jennifer Rhys-Davies, an experienced Queen of the Night, was not on her best form, with some of the coloratura sketchy and the stratospheric notes pecked at rather than thrown off with assurance; but she cut a stately, menacing figure.
Moore set the opening scenes of the opera on the moon, then came back to earth, as it were, for Sarastro's domain, a high-tech enterprise with computers and contemporary office furniture, where Sarastro flaunted a CD-Rom (presumably as his symbol of authority). Tamino and Papageno were clearly inhibited by the spaceman costumes they wore in the opening scene, but at least they didn't wear them long. Sarastro's followers wore the formal robes and insignia of just about every religion one could think of. His was clearly a very welcoming cult indeed, with a broad ecumenical appeal. Yet despite the use of English, it was hard to know where the characters were and what they were doing without having grasp of the story already. Such confusion notwithstanding, Rae Smith's designs had a definite visual flair, and her magical effects worked neatly.
Dutch conductor Vincent de Kort tried with some success to elicit a period approach from the Scottish Opera Orchestra. His fast tempos were initially refreshing but in the course of a number tended to solidify into mere mechanical overdrive. The evening as a whole distinctly lacked charm and humanity, without which no Magic Flute can really be deemed a success.
GEORGE HALL
CARDIFF
Handel's operas present directors with a special set of problems, his oratorios -- which were not staged in his lifetime, primarily due to a ban on the representation of Biblical characters in the theater -- another. The oratorios' frequent choruses, while helpfully varying the musical texture, often show a group philosophizing for minutes on end about a fine moral point, and there's nothing inherently dramatic about that. So the director usually tries to come up with some business to maintain visual interest.
Welsh National Opera's new production of Jephtha (seen June 4) was directed by Katie Mitchell, an experienced theater director who's given WNO two notable Janácek productions -- K´ata Kabanov´a and Jenuºfa. The period here was the 1940s, the setting unspecified (possibly Palestine). The action was set in what looked like a hotel, damaged in some conflict. Whatever the locale, Vicki Mortimer's sets were a triumph of stagecraft, changing in seconds from one part of the hotel to another, providing some of the fanciest, most stylish visuals seen at WNO in a long time.
Jephtha, Handel's last oratorio, was written in 1752, and its completion was delayed because his vision was deteriorating while he composed it. Based on the Book of Judges, it tells the story of the warrior Jephtha, who, like Mozart's Idomeneo, vows to sacrifice the first living thing he meets on returning successfully from battle with the Ammonites. It's his daughter, Iphis, whom he meets, and the bulk of the work explores this poignant situation before an Angel intervenes to commute Iphis's sentence to lifelong virginity. ("Hallelujah! Amen!" sings the relieved chorus at the end.)
Broadly speaking, Mitchell successfully made this drama live in the characters and the situations. Where she erred (presumably in tandem with conductor Paul McCreesh) was in allowing the emotions to overwhelm the music and even the vocalism. At moments of stress, singers resorted to shouting. Both Iphis's mother, Storgè (Susan Bickley), and Iphis herself (Sarah Tynan) had minor screaming fits in between singing -- understandable, but not very Handelian. Jephtha (Mark Padmore), pressing the priests to carry out the sacrifice, shouted "Go! Go! Go!," as if he were in an action movie. Handel didn't set these words. His librettist, Thomas Morell, didn't write them. Perhaps because of this approach, not enough of the singing had the shapely line and firm control of tone needed to achieve Handel's effects, which can be just as moving as anything a stage director might devise. There was too much emphasis on "expression" at the expense of legato. Frequently, the result was deeply inexpressive.
Padmore did well in the higher register, but some of his lower notes were inaudible. Bickley was overwrought and underwhelming. Though few of her words came over, some of the best singing came from Tynan, especially in partnership with her lover Hamor (countertenor Daniel Taylor); their duet of innocent love, prior to Jephtha's return, was a highlight. With superior diction, Christopher Purves successfully portrayed Jephtha's hard-hearted brother, Zebul.
McCreesh was a vital presence in the pit, coaxing a convincing sense of period style out of the modern-instrument players of the WNO Orchestra. Occasionally, however, his dynamism hardened into the driven, with not enough space in between phrases.
Mitchell's production was at best articulate and engaging, at worst fidgety and frenetic. It was difficult to avoid the suspicion that she aimed to bring the work closer to a spoken play than Handel envisaged. Opera -- and oratorio -- can make its full impact only when singers are allowed and encouraged to make the power of the singing voice their overriding concern. Here, that concern was too often compromised, to the work's loss.
GEORGE HALL
MUNICH
The death of Herbert Wernicke left Munich's new Ring cycle in suspended animation. Director Hans-Peter Lehmann jumped in to save Die Walküre, using Wernicke's sets. This was a compromise that worked moderately well, and the opera opened the 2002 Munich Festival. Director David Alden then took over, changing direction entirely for his Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Now responsible for this Ring, he decided to keep Wernicke's Rheingold, jettisoning the Walküre completely and replacing it less than ten months after its premiere with new sets and costumes by Gideon Davey. In Alden's concept, Wotan has waged continuous war since the loss of the gold. The world is in a state of devastation, destruction becoming an end in itself. Siegmund and Sieglinde, for example, break out of Hunding's prison-like house only to find themselves in an already dead world. The Valkyries are in military costume, collecting dead heroes (or parts of them) indiscriminately. They are like little children, blindly seeking their daddy's favor. Brünnhilde is portrayed as a vaudeville tap-dancer or a performing robot, neither thinking nor feeling, never motivating her decision to defend Siegmund. Hers is simply the weakest of a number of Alden's ludicrously infantile characterizations.
There's a myriad of silliness, but the great problem with this production is that one rapidly loses interest in the fates of all the characters, except the siblings in Act I. This opera can be seen as a modern parable of the effects of greed and power, but the music's Romantic nature begs for emotional involvement. Zubin Mehta's magnificent conducting displayed exactly the feeling that Alden's staging totally negated. With the exception of the reliable Marjana Lipovsek (as Fricka), the cast heard May 11 was identical to that of the premiere of the Wernicke/Lehmann staging. Peter Seiffert was nothing short of spectacular as Siegmund, Waltraud Meier repeated her riveting Sieglinde, John Tomlinson showed his usual strengths (and weaknesses) as a dominant Wotan. Gabriele Schnaut looked ridiculous and sang variably as Brünnhilde; Kurt Rydl was shakier than usual as Hunding.
JEFFREY A. LEIPSIC
AMSTERDAM
Sold-out performances, standing ovations, a cheering audience -- who could have anticipated such a reaction to Die Soldaten, Bernd Alois Zimmermann's notoriously difficult, "modern" opera? The performance on May 25, the last in a highly successful series of productions by Willy Decker (this one imported from Dresden, staged here by Meisje Barbara Hummel), marked a new high point in the director's collaboration with Netherlands Opera. Certainly this isn't an easy opera (first heard in 1965). The libretto, by the composer, is more pessimistic than its source, the play by Jakob Lenz (from 1775), which concludes with a reconciliation scene between the fallen Marie Wesener and her father. There is no such reconciliation in the opera: here, Wesener doesn't even recognize the whore who begs money from him. Decker made Die Soldaten not only acceptable but comprehensible, no easy task.
The production concentrated on the central motif -- the downfall of an individual, Marie, who goes her own way and is destroyed by society -- as a eternal and repeating process. In a symbolic, ritualistic opening scene, all the players, in white dress and whiteface, pick the "the outcast," and the same thing happens in the closing scene. Individual characters were sharply distinguished, while the soldiers were portrayed as a group who do not accept noncomformity of any kind.
Hartmut Haenchen and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra delivered the score with a clarity and drive that were astonishing. The huge orchestra --130 musicians, including a jazz combo and electronic effects -- performed most naturally, as if it played Zimmermann every week. Onstage, the Netherlands Opera Chorus demonstrated its high musical and dramatic standards, revealing exceptional discipline in Troy Mundy's demanding choreography. Claudia Barainsky led an excellent cast, portraying a girlish Marie, who causes her own downfall simply through her longing for love, admiration and happiness. Michael Kraus and Tom Randle were just as convincing as a driven Stolzius and a selfish Desportes, but all the soloists were truly persuasive, delivering a performance that was nearly flawless.
PAUL KORENHOF
BOLOGNA
Andreas Homoki's production of Smetana's The Bartered Bride, first mounted at the Komische Oper in Berlin [see OPERA NEWS on line, Jan. 2003] and recently revived at the Teatro Comunale (seen May 25), proved that the simplest ideas are often the most effective in the theater. Frank Philipp Schlössmann's set consisted of nothing more than a tall fence spanning the stage horizontally. For Berliners it was no doubt reminiscent of the Wall, and indeed the action seemed to take place in the years of the Iron Curtain, when Western goods were imported to Eastern Europe by black-marketeers (appropriately coordinated here by the marriage-broker Kecal). Yet the fence functioned metaphorically not as an overt political statement but as an expression of the divisions that exist within any society: between family members, men and women, rich and poor. And the amount of time spent by characters leaning over the fence or peeping through its cracks reminded one of how important observing other people's existences is in the lives of many. (It is after all what the audience does in the opera house.) What made Homoki's achievement remarkable was his ability to create around this fence a community of entirely credible characters -- each member of the chorus had a life of his own that seemed to spring from the colors and rhythms of the music -- within which the archetypal plot could unravel with absolute spontaneity.
Outstanding as both actors and singers were Austrian soprano Martina Serafin (a captivating Marenka with a naturally affecting timbre) and basses Maxim Mikhailov (who revealed a rare mastery of gesture and vocal inflection as Kecal) and Alexander Teliga (hilariously funny as the hen-pecked Krusina, and at the same time a model of rich, poised voice production). Less remarkable vocally, but highly individual in their characterizations, were Ludovit Ludha and Otokar Klein as Jeník and Vasek, Monica Minarelli as their scheming mother and Richard Van Allen as their father. The chorus deserved no less praise than the principals for its characterful acting and singing, and the orchestra responded dazzlingly to the challenges of the score, under Roberto Polastri's expert baton.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
CAGLIARI
Strauss's final opera, Capriccio, is so full of intellectually stimulating ideas -- about the interplay of words and music and the nature of theatrical experience itself -- that director Luca Ronconi, famously fond of conceptual conceits, felt no need to impose any of his own, as he often does in less "sophisticated" works. His new production (seen on May 4) at Cagliari's Teatro Lirico -- which has become one of Italy's leading opera houses -- was stunning to look at. In Margherita Palli's set design, the velvet curtains and gilded mirrors of the Countess's salon doubled effortlessly as symbols of the teasing theatricality of a "musical conversation," which the characters themselves decide to turn into an opera. Vera Marzot's equally ravishing costumes suggested the evening dress of Strauss's era rather than the original eighteenth-century setting, and the sleek lines of the gowns matched to perfection the drawn-out elegance of the orchestral melodies.
Dagmar Schellenberger's Countess was a model of aristocratic poise and charm, and her bemused listening to the other characters proved theatrically compelling in itself. Her voice, unfortunately, is less striking -- lacking in the focus, sheen and soaring ease the part ideally requires -- but the intelligence of her phrasing partly made up for limited means. The rest of the cast was almost uniformly excellent. It was gratifying to hear the role of Flamand sung with consistently beautiful tone and clear diction by tenor Giuseppe Filianoti: his rendition of the sonnet was one of the high points of the performance. His exchanges with Markus Werba's acutely portrayed Olivier were quite unstilted, as was Jan-Hendrik Rootering's La Roche (a warmly exuberant assumption that well deserved the applause after an impassioned monologue). Wolfgang Holzmair proved a rather irritatingly affected Count, but Doris Soffel was delightful as the actress Clairon, and the eight servants were splendidly portrayed by expert Italian comprimario singers. The aspirated line of tenor Massimiliano Pisapia as the Italian Singer rather spoiled the effect of the parodistic farewell duet, but Anna Chiericchetti was fine as his partner.
This was the first time the opera had been staged in Sardinia, but the orchestral playing was invariably secure and well-tuned. However, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos's conducting proved too coolly proficient for the music's good, making one more aware of bar lines than of singing melodies.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
GÖTTINGEN
This year marked Nicholas McGegan's thirteenth season as artistic director of the Göttingen International Handel Festival, but superstition was said to have had nothing to do with his decision to relinquish the baton for the opera production. With the festival focusing on late Handel, McGegan conducted the last of the composer's oratorios, Jephtha, but Michael Schneider presided over the last of the operas, Deidamia (from 1741, seen May 29). The latter, despite its heroic subject and the presence of Ulysses and Achilles among the characters, is an unusually light-hearted work, partly because Achilles spends most of the opera disguised as a girl. Preparations for the Trojan War are underway, but because of a prophecy that it cannot begin without Achilles, he is sought out by Ulysses and Phoenix on the island of Scyros; there King Lycomedes has concealed him because, according to the oracle, Achilles will die if he fights Troy. Despite his disguise, Achilles can't resist opportunities to demonstrate his prowess as a hero -- he's supposed to participate in a hunt as merely a "hunting nymph" but ends up killing a stag. His identity is eventually revealed, and the heroes depart for Troy, thus putting an end to various romantic entanglements involving Lycomedes's daughter, Deidamia, and her companion, Nerea.
Peer Boysen's production, which he also designed, quickly accumulated several strikes against it. His decision to set Lycomedes's court in a Greek restaurant made one wonder whether he had recently seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the blue-and-white decor was correspondingly tacky; along the sides, one could see back into the singers' dressing rooms, for no apparent reason that bore on the drama. Handel's instructions on entrances and exits of characters were disregarded (as they routinely are in German productions). And Boysen inserted long pauses in the recitative, presumably for dramatic effect, but in this long opera (performed uncut or close to it), they seemed self-indulgent. However, Boysen did effectively bring out some of the humor, especially when a typical Handelian sleep aria occurs, of all places, during the hunting scene.
The opera's humor barely touches the title character, who cares deeply about her beloved Achilles and his fate. The gifted soprano Heidrun Kordes sang Deidamia with a variety of tonal color and expressive warmth but also handled the bravura moments with verve. The countertenor Robert Crowe was miscast as Achilles, not just because his tone sounded undernourished one moment, strident the next, but because Handel wrote the part for a female soprano; given Achilles's feminine disguise, a woman in the part makes good sense. Another countertenor, Michael Maniaci (Ulysses), did better, especially in his interesting Act I aria defending the rationale of the Trojan War, but he sounded a bit hooty in a rage aria later. The delightful soprano Claron McFadden was a vivacious presence as Nerea and sang winningly, though some high notes showed signs of wear. Two low-voiced men also contributed excellent performances, baritone Nils Cooper as Phoenix and veteran bass Harry van der Kamp as Lycomedes. Michael Schneider at times allowed the singers too much leeway with cadenzas, but otherwise he and La Stagione, Frankfurt, upheld the festival's high standard of period-instrument performance. Still, one couldn't help but think that Deidamia would have been well served by McGegan's ebullient approach to Handel and might have moved along with more dynamism.
For the last couple of years American novelist Donna Leon has teamed with Il Complesso Barocco, led by Alan Curtis, for an unusual mixture of readings from her fiction and performances of Handel arias and duets. The events have become highly popular with the Göttingen audience, even though the readings are in English. Just what, if anything, the ingredients have to do with each other is anyone's guess, since much of Leon's work consists of modern-day detective novels. Perhaps the jarring contrasts are part of the appeal, but the Italian setting of her fiction does make for a cultural link of sorts, especially when, as on May 30, the readings dealt with music and food. After initial selections by Handel, including the exquisite duet "Per le porte del tormento" from Sosarme, Leon read a passage from her novel Wilful Behavior, describing the attempts of Police Commissioner Brunetti and his wife to have dinner while their son and daughter fight over a pop CD. (Brunetti hopes the daughter will prevail, since she will play it using earphones.) A second reading, from a short story, described in choice detail another married couple's ritualistic dinner of spaghetti carbonara and coteghino sausage. In the meantime, there were duets from Serse, Orlando, Rinaldo and Rodelinda arrestingly performed by soprano Simone Kermes and alto Sonia Prina. Each singer was allowed an aria from Giulio Cesare, Kermes offering an impassioned "Se pietà" in which the da capo in particular had a fierce intensity, Prina bringing swagger and robust tone to "Empio, dirò." Curtis presided over the musical performances in fine style and seemed as amused by the proceedings as everybody else.
GEORGE LOOMIS
CAPE TOWN
Billed as "Cape Town Opera's Extravaganza On the Water," Aqua Opera is the second annual event of its kind mounted by Cape Town Opera. Last year, this mélange of opera highlights, presented on a floating barge rather tenuously tethered to a quay on the city's picturesque Waterfront (at once an entertainment mecca, shopper's paradise and stroller's delight), brought hoards of enthusiastic patrons out in chilly autumnal weather. This year, the formula was repeated with equal commercial success (though the planners put up twice the amount of open-air scaffolding in expectation of a few thousand more patrons than in 2002, who did not materialize). Cape Town Opera lined up a bevy of local stars -- sopranos Virginia Davids and Zanne Stapelberg, tenor Derrick Ellis, basses Rouel Beukes and Fikile Mvinjelwa -- plus a strong supporting cast of budding new talent, with the formidable underpinning of the company's chorus under Daniel Mestre.
The entertainment provided was a series of disembodied highlights, bewildering climaxes sans foreplay, from composers as various as Verdi, Dvorák and Sigmund Romberg. These were loosely grouped under various sonorous headings: "Opera Guerriera (War)," Opera Spumante (Festive)," "Opera Latte (Romantic)," etc. This initially felt less like opera than a fancy spectacle for people with slight attention spans. Yet a curious unity was imposed on the evening by the staggering designs of codirector Andrew Botha, an international events facilitator with credits in Greece, Paris, London and Australasia. Leaving the vocal niceties to his collaborator, Angelo Gobbato, Botha created a mise-en-scène that suggested a vast backstage. He raided the prop collection of the old Cape and Transvaal Performing Arts Boards, and his costumes were playful, bright and enticingly glamorous. He threw into the mix the show dancers from the Moulin Rouge (a downtown girlie bar), whose outrageous arabesques were part of the show's success. In effect, Botha's designs created a new story out of diverse elements -- a postmodern narrative à la Moulin Rouge (the movie) rather than merely a string of opera's greatest hits.
As oddly-dressed people sang of unfathomable joy and travail, what emerged was hardly opera in any recognizable sense, yet the strange new tale did celebrate the capacities of the human voice. And perhaps some visitors were enticed to return for the company's regular season (including stagings of Nabucco, Faust and The Bartered Bride).
GUY WILLOUGHBY
NORTH AMERICA
HOUSTON
Well before the overture started, while the house lights were still up, dancers, choristers and supernumeraries entered the stage and, as the music started, began to dance. One quickly surmised that this was not going to be a traditional staging of Massenet's Manon (heard May 9). David McVicar sought to add a hard edge to this production (from English National Opera), first seen in the U.S. in Dallas in 2001. He depicts the title character as a product of the ubiquitous corruption of her times, rather than as the coquette Massenet envisioned -- a girl who by her nature can't refuse pleasure. To that end, crowds frequently loitered onstage, leering at the main characters, even in the supposed intimacy of the lovers' Parisian apartment in Act II. Employing the new orthodoxy in staging that seems to pass for innovation these days in Houston (as seen in David Alden's Ariodante last fall, for example), McVicar and staging director Lee Blakeley littered the playing area with chairs and tables, often upended, and had the characters walk all over them, flicking fans and engaging in oh-so-naughty acts of passion and other questionable stage activities, such as a suicide in Act IV and some business with a chamber pot. Manon and her Chevalier were left alone for the seduction scene at St.-Sulpice, but they ended up on a floor covered with the apples (a heavy-handed symbolism) that remained from the previous scene, when the crowd at the Cours-la-Reine pelted the ballet dancers with fruit. (The dancers themselves resorted to fisticuffs.)
The singers played along good-naturedly. Tigran Martirossian was rather cold, vocally and emotionally, as Count des Grieux. Jon Kolbet played Guillot as a buffoon, which diluted the impact of his revenge in Act IV, but he made the most of his role musically. Patryk Wroblewski was an authoritative Brétigny, and Marc Barrard sang beautifully as Lescaut, especially in "Rosalinde." A last-minute stand-in for Marcello Giordani, who canceled his U.S. engagements with the start of the war in Iraq, Scott Piper sang des Grieux as well as could be expected, given the trying circumstances. He was especially convincing in duets with Manon and in his best-known songs, such as the "Rêve" and "Ah! fuyez douce image." The Houston Grand Opera Orchestra and conductor Emmanuel Joel provided solid musical support.
But the performance belonged to Elizabeth Futral, singing her first Manon. Hers is a voice of great beauty and versatility, and this role shows it off to good advantage. In Act III, Scene 1, her signature brilliant high notes and coloratura sparkled effortlessly, and she looked and acted regal. Yet she was equally on target, vocally and dramatically, as the young innocent of "Je suis encore toute étourdie" and as the sultry charmer of "N'est-ce plus ma main?" Throughout the varied demands of this difficult role, Futral proved a consummate singing actress. The only false note came in "Adieu, notre petite table," when the singer seemed so focused on her own emotions that the audience was shut out.
WALTER B. BAILEY
WASHINGTON
In an age when many people see things only as black or white, good or evil, Washington Opera's new production of Beethoven's Fidelio seemed doubly appropriate (seen May 10 at DAR Constitution Hall). Moral distinctions were drawn as starkly in the staging as in the text. The vaguely contemporary world conjured up by director Francesca Zambello, set designer Peter J. Davison and costume designer Anita Yavich proved arresting, with strong suggestions of the Nazi and Stalinist eras. A huge, omnipresent prison wall dominated the stage; railroad tracks cut across the floor, evoking images of the death camps -- images reinforced when guards with German shepherds patrolled and searchlights crisscrossed the theater. Clusters of video monitors on poles carried photos of inmates and, in the finale, bright flowers. More flowers appeared, with almost cartoonish blatancy, to signal the joy when Florestan left his subterranean cell (with a real dirt floor, by the way). The overture was turned into background music (only partially effective) for Zambello's rather heavy-handed plot-setting device, a pantomime in which Florestan passed out political leaflets to an excited crowd before being hauled away by Pizarro's troops; left behind, Leonore was seen cutting off her hair and setting off to the rescue. Zambello's other unsubtle directorial flourishes included the humiliation, beating and (thankfully, offstage) execution of some prisoners, but she revealed remarkably effective ideas, too. For example, Rocco slipped Leonore the pistol with which to threaten Pizarro, enriching the jailer's character significantly. And when the prisoners were let outside for sun and air, Zambello affectingly underscored the literal darkness of their plight by having them bring books along, desperate for the chance to read again. When soldiers roughly snatched the books and tossed them away, Marzelline slyly saved a couple for herself.
The acting was uniformly involved and involving, the singing less consistent. Susan B. Anthony (Leonore) encountered difficulties at the extreme ranges of her voice, but a nice, strong patch in the middle got the job done. Although Christopher Ventris (Florestan) could have used more tonal weight in the upper reaches, his vivid phrasing and superor diction compensated strongly. Korliss Uecker (Marzelline) nearly stole the show with her creamy soprano tones and artful characterization. Eric Halfvarson was an endearing, beefy-voiced Rocco. Tom Fox (Pizarro) and Alan Held (Fernando) offered solid vocalism. Ferdinand von Bothmer used his pleasant tenor deftly as Jaquino. The chorus summoned a rich, cohesive sound. The orchestra had a sometimes bumpy night technically but responded with considerable expression to Heinz Fricke's sensitive, authoritative conducting.
TIM SMITH
CHICAGO
Handel's early comedy Agrippina was a smash hit at its premiere in 1709, establishing the composer as a force to be reckoned with -- with good reason. The dazzling score is notable for a level of character delineation unusual in its day, as well as for Handel's unprecedented flexibility within the formal da capo aria style. Grimani's libretto admittedly diddles with history -- we are spared Agrippina's probable murder of the emperor Claudius and her own death, by matricide. Even so, the work provides a stinging commentary on the bloodthirsty, frankly ridiculous behavior of mortals vying for political power, a message as relevant today as in Handel's time.
Glorious music deserves superior musical leadership, and Chicago Opera Theater got it with the American debut of conductor Emmanuelle Haïm. After decades of anachronistic post-Romantic interpretation or "period" approaches threatening bloodless fundamentalism, the modern performance of Baroque music has come into its own. Haïm is one of a generation of specialists capable of presenting this repertoire in a manner respectful of its place in musical history while striking a chord with the modern consciousness. Those who find Baroque opera an exercise in ornamental monotony might well be converted by the sheer variety of Haïm's musicianship. From the agitated bravura of the wicked title character's music to the legato grace of that for Ottone, every phrase was illuminated with stunning theatricality. Her very demeanor in the pit is fascinating; an animated, swaying presence seemingly at one with the spirit of music.
Haïm conducted an international cast of singers, with the women particularly impressive. Monica Colonna's dramatic coloratura limned her delightfully malevolent Agrippina, and Jane Archibald's woozy ditz of a Poppea sailed through her music with panache and a genuine trill. Kristina Hammarstrom's Nerone provided an effective masculine presence and high-octane passagework. Countertenor duties were well served by Pascal Bertin's sweetly lyrical Ottone, the only character who is not morally bankrupt, and Stephen Wallace's Narciso, distinctive in his beautifully vocalized Act II aria. Derrick Parker's randy Claudio led a delegation of bass-baritones completed by Ricardo Herrera's comic Pallante and Brandon Mayberry's ambitious Lesbo.
Lillian Groag directed a similar production of this opera for Glimmerglass and New York City Opera last season. Here, her sparkling direction creatively illuminated the eighteenth-century material while pulling it into a modern idiom -- Poppea flipping through Vogue was a cute and representative touch. Designs by Michael Ganio and Tracy Dorman combined modern costumes with scenic hints of antiquity -- bits of Corinthian architecture suggesting the palatial domain and banners depicting images of nude Classical statuary framing the eroticism of Poppea's chamber. Under Robert Wierzel's rosy lighting, a sense of visual timelessness was achieved that underscored Groag's action beautifully.
MARK THOMAS KETTERSON
ATLANTA
Like most regional opera troupes around the country, Atlanta Opera keeps its subscribers happy with regular doses of the bread-and-butter operas by Puccini, Verdi and Mozart, yet the company has had major artistic successes when it wandered a little farther afield, into the operas of Richard Strauss. An effervescent 1988 Ariadne auf Naxos was followed by a witty, achingly lovely Der Rosenkavalier in 1996 and, for its current season, a gripping Salome (seen May 8). Marc Verzatt's lean, un-campy production held its audience from the moment the curtain rose on designer Boyd Ostroff's evocative outdoor terrace of Herodes's palace, the stage picture dominated by a giant, cratered full moon that hung in the sky like an enormous shield waiting to crush the title character. Verzatt wisely allowed Strauss to do most of the work, trusting this shrewdly constructed one-act opera to unfold with the taut inevitability of a contemporary thriller, still packing a visceral punch nearly a century after its first performance.
Leading lady Aimee Willis revealed both the vocal stamina and the lyric technique to make a formidable yet credibly young and fresh impression in the title role. Willis played her early scenes with the unaffected confidence of a teenager who is used to having anything she wants. Slowly unraveling after her frustrating encounter with Jochanaan, she paced the stage with the barely controlled fury of a jungle cat, then gave way to a graceful dance of the seven veils and the icy calculation of her grisly fee for that performance. As the object of her lust, Philip Skinner sang robustly and with a sustained legato line; this was a satisfying Jochanaan who looked none the worse for his long imprisonment. (Was there a gym in Herodes's dungeon?) Allan Glassman, who sang Bacchus in that 1988 Ariadne, contributed some of the evening's best vocalism with his securely sung Herodes, conveying the character's mounting hysteria and panic without the barking and whining other tenors have foisted on the role. Mezzo Delores Ziegler brought plush tone and voluptuous beauty to the role of Herodias, looking every inch a formidable seductress, and she charted the character's shifting moods of arrogance and jealousy. Thomas Trotter registered sympathetically as Narraboth.
At least as heard from one of the Fox Theatre's acoustic "sweet spots," William Fred Scott led his well-rehearsed orchestra in a luminous reading of the score that savored the exotic inner details of Strauss's luxurious score while maintaining a consistent sense of momentum until, alas, the very last pages, when Salome's communion with her bloody trophy was stretched almost to the breaking point. In sum, however, this was a masterly instrumental performance kept in careful balance with the vocalists. This was a Salome to savor, and one of the company's strongest productions in recent seasons.
JOHN CROOK
BOSTON
Boston Lyric Opera offered the company premiere of La Rondine in a stylish, elegant production by Colin Graham, conducted with splendid vigor and wit by BLO music director Stephen Lord (seen April 4). Frequent collaborators at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (where they serve as artistic director and music director, respectively), Graham and Lord marked their BLO debut as a team with Puccini's bittersweet confection of lovers meeting in Paris and parting on the French Riviera. Another pair of OTSL veterans, Pamela Armstrong and Shawn Mathey, marked their BLO debuts as Magda and Ruggero, with Elizabeth Comeaux (Lisette), David Cangelosi (Prunier) and James Maddalena (Rambaldo) adding La Rondine to their already impressive BLO résumés. Sets by John Conklin and costumes by Jess Goldstein were from OTSL, which produced the opera (with different staging) in 1996.
Magda's two Act I arias are justly beloved by Puccinians, and both were delivered beautifully here by Armstrong, whose supple phrasing and clarity of intention were a joy throughout the performance. But Graham and Lord mined gold in all three acts of La Rondine, making a strong case for this opera, often dismissed as an awkward hybrid of operetta and verismo. The Act I scene of the rapt, pre-Bullier's rendezvous between Lisette and Prunier was delicious, the sly sexual urgency of Cangelosi's Prunier a perfect foil for the fluffy good cheer of Comeaux's Lisette, the orchestra and singers so perfectly balanced and the stage action, a teasing progression of kisses and caresses, so finely judged that one felt as if one were eavesdropping. The lush Act II quartet with chorus ("Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso") cast its glorious show-stopping wallop, with Mathey's handsome timbre and ardent delivery a special pleasure, but just as potent were the closing moments of Act II, with chimes and strings gently sparkling beneath the vocal line as Magda told Ruggero, "Ti amo! Ti amo! Ma tu non sai, tu non sai." BLO opted to use the first of Puccini's three versions of the opera, which meant that Act III finished with a poignant scene of farewell, as Magda tenderly breaks Ruggero's heart into pieces. Both Mathey and Armstrong made the most of their opportunities here, confirming their reputations as American artists on the rise. The young tenor's essentially lyric instrument managed an impressive facsimile of verismo heft, with no loss of sweetness or sincerity, while the soprano's dignity, her full-lipped, sad-eyed prettiness and her ripe, glowing tone made her an unforgettable Magda.
F. PAUL DRISCOLL
SAN DIEGO
Rounding out San Diego Opera's season, Russian tenor Sergej Larin made a role debut as Verdi's Otello. He enjoyed the support of a strong cast, including Russian soprano Marina Mescheriakova (Desdemona) and Romanian baritone Alexandru Agache (Iago). Conductor Edoardo Müller, one of SDO's stronger regulars, provided the leadership that Verdi's piece demands, while noted stage director Sonja Frisell, in her company debut, and veteran set and costume designer Zack Brown were entrusted with the production.
Larin proved a worthy contender in the Otello sweepstakes, but where he will go with this role is anybody's guess. In the well-known danger zones, his voice alternated between clarion sounds of astonishing volume and others less secure. The lower and middle registers seemed to exist in different dimensions. Though he revealed tremendous potential, he possesses many weaknesses, as well, and his voice doesn't seem consistently large enough for this role. Meanwhile, his embryonic dramatic interpretation got little help from Frisell's conventional staging.
Mescheriakova has aspirations as a Verdian, and her interpretation of Desdemona is highly accomplished. (She has performed the role before, most notably at the Vienna State Opera.) On this occasion, however, the soprano was unable to project an entirely convincing character. While her vocal and musical abilities were impressive, she was emotionally distant. In the love duet and the final scenes, the gorgeous willow song and Ave Maria, she offered nothing exceptionally moving. The role of Iago is an invitation to overacting, but Agache resisted. An enjoyable, convincingly evil presence with plenty of vocal heft, the baritone lacked only the clear Italian diction needed to make the part dramatically gripping. Larin and Agache offered fine, though hardly hair-raising, duets.
The excellent supporting cast included tenor Joseph Hu (Roderigo), mezzo-soprano Pritag Gandhi (Emila), tenor Richard Troxell (Cassio) and bass Julien Robbins (Lodovico). Frisell's production, however, was very much run-of-the-mill, with one predictable element after another, about as far from "director's opera" as possible -- though her approach didn't seem imprudent in generally conservative San Diego.
DAVID GREGSON
TAMPA
For quite a while, as Verdi and Boito worked on what was to become Otello, they planned to call the opera Iago. One could understand why in Opera Tampa's production (seen April 26) at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Stephen Kechulius gave a compelling portrayal of Iago as a master of disinformation and manipulation. His performance was a thrilling combination of oiliness and charm, ranging from richly open-throated singing to an almost conversational quality in the "Credo." Arms folded across his chest and commanding the stage with cocksure bearing, or striking an insouciant pose, Kechulius's Iago was deceptively casual in his declaration of evil, making this "Credo" all the more chilling. Kechelius was hired on short notice, after Justino Díaz, a veteran Iago (in Franco Zeffirelli's 1986 film, for example) dropped the role from his repertory and withdrew from the production just before rehearsals began. As a result, the Tampa audience got a great opportunity to hear an up-and-coming singer in what may become one of his signature roles.
Antonio Barasorda's Otello was on the subtle side, without the bellowing rage that can overtake the role; his singing was more neat than powerful. This actorly approach paid off, deepening the mystery of the Moor's motivation, which is the main issue in the opera. Why does Otello fall victim so easily to Iago's manipulation and the flimsy evidence of a handkerchief? Barasorda seemed to indicate Otello's epilepsy (or some other brain condition) may hold the answer, as he gripped his head in anguish at one point; slithery harmonics in the orchestra reinforced the notion. The expression of jealousy as a form of male control over women was certainly implied in Otello's alternating roughness and tenderness with Desdemona, though much more could have been done with that concept. Director Vernon Hartman had the cast for less than two weeks of rehearsal, so a more nuanced performance was probably out of the question.
Yali-Marie Williams was an angelic Desdemona, innocent and sincere, and her light soprano held up well through the long night of singing. She wrung every last drop of poignancy from the death-haunted willow song, delicately supported by the orchestra under Anton Coppola. Rafael Davila's Cassio was ardent and alert to the score. Marc Deaton's Roderigo was virtually inaudible in Act I. As Emilia, Hillary Nicholson was also hard to hear in her Act II scene with Iago, but she cut loose with a bloody cry in the finale. The large chorus rose to the challenge of Verdi's sophisticated writing.
The set, designed by Peter Dean Beck for Atlanta Opera, was almost wholly abstract. The stage was occupied by a series of platforms and poles with banners, which were sometimes furled, sometimes not, for no readily discernible reason. Two banners were fully unfurled, for example, when Otello demoted Cassio. Joseph P. Oshry provided the evocative lighting design.
JOHN FLEMING
SARASOTA
The rarity on Sarasota's bill this season was L'Amore dei Tre Re (The Love of Three Kings), conducted by artistic director Victor DeRenzi and directed by John Basil. Italo Montemezzi's opera had its premiere at La Scala in 1913 and enjoyed quite a vogue (championed by Rosa Ponselle, Enrico Caruso, Grace Moore, Dorothy Kirsten and Mary Garden), yet it had all but vanished by the 1960s. With its interesting mix of musical languages, crossing Wagnerian harmonics in the orchestra with Italianate singing, L'Amore's obscurity is something of a puzzle.
One possible reason is that the leading role is for a bass, but the Sarasota production boasted Kevin Short's powerful interpretation of Archibaldo, a barbarian who conquered Italy forty years prior to the action and now, old and blind, rules uneasily. Archibaldo has arranged the marriage of his son, Manfredo, to the Italian princess Fiora, but he suspects that she is unfaithful. When Fiora admits that she has a lover, Archibaldo strangles her and carries her body offstage.
The booming-voiced Short, who sang Verdi's Oberto for Sarasota two years ago, is not a singer who communicates primarily through words, which is just as well, because Montemezzi's dense orchestration could be tough to penetrate with diction intact. In Act I, Short brought both command and tenderness to "Italia!," an arresting mix of war aria and love song to Italy. In one questionable detail, Short's blind monarch felt his way tentatively around the castle, surely a familiar environment he would negotiate confidently.
As Fiora, soprano Carol Ann Manzi did a decent job of portraying a woman who realizes she is doomed. Fiora's Act II scene with her lover, Avito, is invariably compared to the passionate duet of Tristan und Isolde, but it felt more frantic than sexual in the over-the-top performance by Manzi and tenor Daniel Cafiero. Manfredo is a problematic character, rushing home from battle only to be awkwardly received by his wife, and yet he remains forever ardent. Baritone Joshua Benaim didn't solve the problem, with a voice that lacked variety and color. Tenor Andrew Drost, a company Studio Artist, sang smartly as Flaminio.
L'Amore is derivative of Wagner, Debussy and the verismo tradition, yet Montemezzi's score has effective moments all its own, such as an orchestral interlude that mirrors Fiora's turbulent emotions in Act II. There is deft use of onstage and offstage choruses in Act III. If Sem Benelli's libretto is on the flowery side and the finale (reminiscent of the tomb scene that ends Romeo and Juliet) is a muddle, well, that's not the end of the world for an opera. It wouldn't be surprising if other companies programmed it.
Sarasota's revival of Sundine's production (from 2000) of Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles, featuring J. Michael Wingfield's striking designs, drew sellout crowds. In the sweetly blended baritonetenor duet, tenor Jonathan Boyd (Nadir) was especially pleasing, though baritone Stephen Hartley (a Studio Artist substituting for an indisposed Philip Horst) didn't have the necessary heft for Zurga. Christina Bouras was outstanding as the priestess Leila, ranging from smoothly idiomatic French recitative to dramatic coloratura passages. Yannick Nezet-Séguin conducted the orchestra in an exciting performance.
Filling out the season was Die Fledermaus, performed in English. Lisa Willson was a delightfully insincere Rosalinda, and Patricia Johnson's Adele dashed off her top notes with elan. Megan Dey-Tóth was an appealing, though slightly underpowered, Orlofsky. Kyle Pfortmiller's Eisenstein and Christopher Feigum's Falke brought hilarious bravado to their Act I duet in anticipation of the big party. With Gordon's traditional set and John Di Costanzo conducting with plenty of schmaltz, Sarasota's Fledermaus was a frothy concotion, fun while it lasted and almost immediately forgotten.
JOHN FLEMING
CHARLOTTE, NC
For its final production of the season, Opera Carolina stuck to the tried and true: an enjoyable, if unexceptional, presentation of Bizet's Carmen (seen April 26). The sets were handsome, Gregory A. Fortner's staging full of mostly appropriate activity. However, Fortner rewrote the ending of the work (with an assist from the uncredited writer of the projected titles). Don José stabbed Carmen, but only after a protracted, rather violent wrestling match -- so protracted that there wasn't enough music to cover the crowd's return from the corrida and the discovery of the murder. Don José was alone with Carmen's dead body at the final curtain. That made nonsense of lines such as "Vous pouvez m'arrêter," since there was no one to hear him, much less arrest him. The title-writer mistranslated the lines, so that the English-speaking audience might not suspect that the staging had altered the plot.
Victoria Livengood, a veteran Carmen, used all her experience to suggest a seductive vamp. Her singing emphasized her vocal power and use of chest voice, but the top was sometimes strained. Thomas Barrett was a pleasant enough Escamillo, but should Escamillo be merely pleasant? Sujung Kim was an outstanding Micaela: attractive, believable, vocally resplendent. The evening's most memorable moment was provided by William Joyner's Don José, who actually sang the penultimate phrase of the flower song softly. (Though it's marked pp in the score, the phrase is more often belted out.) He then indulged the audience with a lingering diminuendo on the climactic high B-flat. The effect really was lovely, even if Bizet didn't indicate a fermata on that note. Joyner was believable and appropriately youthful, as well. His voice lacks a little of the heft that would make him an ideal José, but he more than compensated with the finesse of his singing.
The minor roles and choruses were quite competently handled. Artistic director and conductor James Meena paced the performance well, and the Charlotte Symphony did a workmanlike job.
LUTHER WADE
OAKLAND, CA
Oakland Opera Theater continues to impress its audiences with inventive productions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century works. Performances (in the Oakland Metro, an intimate yet flexible space) integrate racially diverse casts with audio-visual technology intended to create "musical theater that is relevant and exciting to previously excluded segments of the population," according to the company. How much librettos by Gertrude Stein and Federico García Lorca fulfill those objectives is cause for question, but the productions certainly speak to opera-lovers and performance-art aficionados, who applaud with gusto.
Having scored such a hit with their colorful production of Thomson/Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts that it's now an annual holiday offering, artistic director Thomas S. Dean returned to Stein to offer a six-performance run of Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters (1968), Ned Rorem's short opera based on a play by Stein (seen May 23). To fill out the evening, fifteen renditions of songs by either Rorem or Thomson, many of them settings of lyrics by Stein, preceded the opera.
Set designer Garrett Lowe eschewed the usual combination of flat stage with imagery projected on a vertical scrim or backdrop, building instead a wooden platform, raked at a striking 20 degrees, on which film and video was projected. Soloists variously stood in front of the platform and moved across it, sometimes interacting with images projected on and around them. As an ironic commentary on the less-than-clear-cut content of Stein's prose, both the film and video imagery were in black and white. The visual fantasy was enhanced by Alain Jordenal's imaginative lighting and by use of projected red outlines over the sisters' "dead" bodies, as well as trap doors that doubled as open graves.
Angela Dean-Baham opened the song recital with a regal account of "Deux soeurs qui ne sont pas soeurs," an extended Thomson/Stein scena accompanied by videographer Ethan Hoerneman's droll new realization of a never-produced film scenario that Stein wrote in the 1940s, complete with English subtitles. The famed Thomson/Stein "I Am Rose" followed, reprised four times during the set by three soloists, a duo, and (as a round) the entire five-person ensemble. Each time, Stein's lyrics seemed to take on new, increasingly accessible meaning.
Singing the role of Jenny, soprano Caroline Altman's lovely, little-girl soprano voice, perfectly placed and even in color throughout the range, proved the vocal find of the evening. An ideal soubrette, Altman made easy work of Rorem's occasional coloratura, supplying an innocent persona perfect for her role. A 2000 regional Met finalist, mezzo Sonia Gariaeff, delivered a rewarding performance as Ellen. Since the last time I heard her, her rich instrument has blossomed with impressive new freedom and color on top. Tenor Mark D. Lew (Samuel) provided a fresh, youthful sound and appealing stage presence. Baritone Martin Bell sang Sylvester in a voice that seemed caught in his throat. Mark D. Lew provided delightful music direction.
JASON VICTOR SERINUS
CONCERTS & RECITALS
MOSCOW
The Moscow Easter Festival, now in its second season, has become more than a Moscow beachhead for Valery Gergiev and the Orchestra and Chorus of the Mariinsky (Kirov) Theater. In providing two weeks of high-quality performances, often with famous Russian soloists who rarely perform at home, the festival gives a lift to Moscow's substantial but diffuse musical life. It is essentially a concert (rather than opera or ballet) affair, and to date there hasn't been much of a thematic focus other than to concentrate on Russian music. But Gergiev includes more new music than Moscow concert-audiences are used to (which doesn't require a lot), and this year brought the world premiere of Vladimir Martynov's opera Vita Nova, which was performed in concert at the new Moscow International House of Music on May 3. Giving the world premiere of an opera in concert is surely an oddity, but the approach suited Vita Nova perhaps better than expected, for it seemed more a symphony with voices than an opera. Clearly, Martynov was drawn to the philosophical content of his literary source, Dante's autobiographical discourse on love. The opera has little conventional action, though it is difficult to quantify, since the program book had scant material on the opera (which has portions sung in Russian, Italian and Latin), and no texts were provided. Dante, the opera's main character, has little direct interaction with his beloved Beatrice, who embodies idealized love, but she is the fount of his reflections about love. Eventually the two sing a duet along the way to an apotheosis inspired by his vision of her death.
Martynov has a reputation as a musical minimalist, but Vita Nova might better be called neo-Romantic, even if that term is usually associated with composers who bring a stronger personal voice to their reworking of older material than is the case with much of the music here. Whole passages of the ninety-minute opera would sound at home in Mahler or Strauss, and the so-called Wagner turn is worked almost to death. Perhaps because of the cosmic issues explored -- in a program note, Martynov calls Dante "more than just a poet; he is a theologian" -- there is a strong reliance on what sounded like Russian chant, with much of Dante's music delivered on a kind of reciting tone. To be sure, modernistic touches tie the piece to the present, but what lingers most in the memory are rich choral sonorities and orchestral interludes of genuine beauty, along with singable vocal lines. Unfortunately, the cast of young singers from the Kirov, headed by the able tenor Yevgeny Akimov as Dante, didn't seem to have settled fully into their roles. Yulia Smorodina offered merely ordinary singing as the beguiling Beatrice; Anna Kiknadze had some good mezzo notes as Amor, though much of the music lies awkwardly low for her. Elena Sommer, Alla Perchikova and Elena Bobkhina did well as a trio of Spirits. Vocally, the evening belonged to the Mariinsky's wonderful chorus. And since the performance fell on the day after Gergiev's fiftieth birthday, he passed the baton to the Mariinsky's chorus master, Andrei Petrenko. The theater says it has plans to stage Vita Nova in St. Petersburg, and I hope it proceeds, not least because I'm curious for a better idea of what Martynov was trying to accomplish.
GEORGE LOOMIS
CINCINNATI
At 130 years old, the Cincinnati May Festival is the world's longest-running choral festival. An outgrowth of the old German "Sängerfests" once so popular in America, the May Festival has a distinguished history of vocal soloists and conductors, and an equally distinguished record of musical commissions and world premieres. After strong performances of Verdi's Requiem (May 16) and Mendelssohn's Elijah (May 17), the Festival performed a mini-retrospective, "Encores & Premieres" (May 23). Figuring in the program were Beethoven's "Coriolan" Overture (performed at the first May Festival, 1873), a chorus from Menotti's The Death of the Bishop of Brindisi (world premiere, 1963), the Prelude to Act I of Britten's Gloriana (American premiere, 1956), and Alvin Singleton's choral Praisemaker (world premiere, 1998).
Interest, however, centered on a new world premiere: Franz Liszt's unfinished oratorio St. Stanislaus. Liszt struggled long with the score. The first of its four scenes was composed in 1874. Dissatisfied with the text, Liszt postponed further composition until 1882, during which hiatus he, with the aid of several poet friends, improved the libretto. Just weeks before his death, in 1886, Liszt sent his publisher the music to Scene 4. No music was ever composed for Scenes 2 and 3. At the May Festival's concert, all the extant music for the oratorio was performed together for what is generally believed to have been the first time. Approximately half of the music had never been heard before. Scenes 1 and 4 were heard exactly as Liszt left them, with one exception. Liszt left an aria for the bishop's Mother at the end of Scene 1 in pianovocal score. It has been orchestrated persuasively by musicologist Paul Munson, who prepared all the music for this performance and a subsequent recording by the May Festival forces.
Liszt relates a tale both devotional and political, bringing into conflict the eleventh-century Bishop of Krakow, Stanislaus, and the Polish King Boleslaw II. In the conflict, Stanislaus is murdered. The underlying message is that church and state must remain autonomous within their respective spheres if each is to hold the other accountable. Yet the story doesn't hang together very well, and the text is neither inspired nor inspiring. Stanislaus is dead by the end of (the uncomposed) Scene 3, leaving the stage clear for a suitably repentent King Boleslaw and a patriotic outburst in praise of Poland. At least it gives one baritone soloist (here Donnie Ray Albert) a chance to portray both murderer and victim.
The music is a real grab-bag of musical invention, a reminder of Liszt's daring and innovation. There are plenty of chromatic harmonies; austere, severe passages; and some truly ear-crushing dissonances. Elsewhere, orchestration is often light and transparent, with amazing clarity. Two extensive orchestral passages summon up the religious Liszt (variations on a Gregorian chant melody from the vespers service commemorating martyrs) and the political Liszt (a grand fantasia on two Polish national melodies). But the music takes too long to tell its brief tale. Despite flashes of musical inspiration and greatness, too often the score wanders aimlessly, replete with many a dramatic silence. With such frequent quiet music, the audience's mind tended to wander, too, and one saw a number of nodding heads. A socko grand choral ending eliminated the need for a chorus of Bach's "Sleepers, Awake!" to follow Stanislaus.
The May Festival gave the piece its best shot, with stunningly beautiful, committed performances from all involved. Celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary as the festival's music director, James Conlon conducted with obvious love for the music. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus were models of precision and clarity. Dominating the proceedings were the achingly beautiful singing of Kristine Jepson (the Bishop's Mother) and Albert's majestic singing in both his roles. Mezzo Stacey Rishoi, baritone William McGraw and bass Gustav Andreassen were heard in brief, power-house performances.
CHARLES H. PARSONS
NEW YORK CITY
The first of the MET Orchestra's four May concerts at Carnegie Hall (May 10) featured Olga Borodina in Berlioz's La Mort de Cléopâtre. The composer's 200th birthday is being celebrated this year, and if admirers of the Russian mezzo had been disappointed at her cancellation of Didon in his five-hour-long Les Troyens at the Met this past February (she was on maternity leave), they were clearly thrilled to have the consolation prize of hearing her sing his twenty-minute scène lyrique for mezzo and orchestra.
As in the death scene of Didon in Troyens, Berlioz works to create seamless transitions between dramatic recitative depicting the heroine's anguish and long, lyrical passages with arching melodies, in which she fondly remembers her former glory (notably "Ah! qu'ils sont loin ces jours"). Eccentric Berlioz gestures such as emphasizing the word "tourment" (torment) with an unexpected D-flat chord (this section of the piece is in E-flat) must have shocked the ears of the committee of the Prix de Rome at the time the work was composed, and they are surely one reason Cléopâtre didn't win that prize in 1829. Like Beethoven, Berlioz wasn't particularly interested in making his works easier for singers to perform. Cléopâtre, while not fiendishly difficult, requires the soloist to command a wide range of skills -- sweet, mezza voce entrances; tricky rhythms, especially at the very end; six lunges up to A-flat and two up to B-flat -- but the trick is that all these effects must carry over a huge orchestra, which often makes the ensemble sound as if it were playing fff or ffff, even when marked at forte or fortissimo.
From her riveting high notes (at the first, a B-flat "Ptolémées," audience members jerked to attention in their seats) and astonishingly lush low notes to the half-spoken final measures, depicting Cléopâtre's death by snake bite, Borodina rose easily to the work's challenges. Given the sheer amount of sound this singer can produce, if there were one or two instances where the orchestra covered her briefly, it is a problem that seems inherent in the orchestration. The last notes of the work were met with total silence, then thunderous applause. (It is always amusing to watch Borodina take a bow: from her serious, unsmiling reaction, one would have thought she was being applauded for, say, brushing her teeth.)
James Levine's approach to this work -- as well as to the overture to Benvenuto Cellini, the "Roman Carnival" overture and the Symphonie Fantastique -- emphasized roundness, smoothness, lyrical phrasing and coloristic detail. The orchestra is a marvel, displaying the kind of artistry that attests to the years the conductor and his musicians have worked together. The ensemble sounded best in the exuberant Cellini overture, but there were many passages to savor throughout the program, from the gorgeous English-horn solo in the "scene in the country" movement of Symphonie Fantastique to a moment in that symphony's "march to the scaffold" where the principal and assistant principal violinists exchanged a look that can be described only as pure glee as they dug into a particularly juicy phrase. Levine conducted while seated and gave minimal physical cues, but the orchestra responded to even the slightest motion with commitment and precision, with "Roman Carnival" and Symphonie Fantastique ending in a spectacular blaze of fortissimo, brass-filled glory. What one did not hear much was the demented, unhinged aspect of Berlioz's music, for instance, a truly obsessional-sounding idée fixe in the Symphonie Fantastique, or that work's aching loneliness.
Borodina fans soon will have the opportunity to compare Valery Gergiev's approach to La Mort de Cléopâtre; the two were set to record the work for Decca the same month this concert took place.
JENNIFER MELICK
The MET Orchestra wound up its Carnegie Hall season with two concerts in May that featured the Metropolitan Opera Chorus and four soloists: Heidi Grant Murphy, Susan Graham, Matthew Polenzani and John Relyea (heard May 16 and 18). The program opened with the orchestra and chorus in Brahms's Schicksalslied and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Conductor James Levine artfully exploited the stark contrast between Brahms's wall of sound and Stravinsky's gleaming transparency and startling harmonies. Neither work felt fully considered, however, and the Stravinsky piece, after a bracing start, wound down to a saggy, dispiriting conclusion.
The chief interest of the program was Mozart's C-minor Mass, offering performances of contagious enthusiasm from the choristers and string section, and Levine's most thoughtful leadership. What he missed was the sense of melancholy and foreboding that hovers over the work, to be pierced occasionally (and ultimately dispelled) by radiant, joyful outbursts. This was the only work on the program to feature the soloists, all Metropolitan Opera principals. At the height of her considerable powers and decked out in a slinky black gown (as if celebrating the opportunity to sing Mozart while dressed as a girl), Graham dominated the front of the stage, her Laudamus characterized by dazzling coloratura and uncanny dynamic sensitivity. Though she blended beautifully with Grant Murphy, she did so only by holding back. Grant Murphy's instrument no longer possesses the requisite surface brilliance for Mozart's pealing first-soprano lines, in duets as well as the Kyrie solo, and though she uses it intelligently, her middle register (where much of this music lies) is drab and underpowered. Polenzani applied his flexible tenor voice with skill, adroitly weaving in and out of the highly engaging Quoniam with Graham and Grant Murphy. Relyea, with very little to do but sit and wait, sang his few lines with insufficient legato.
It's one measure of the success of New York Festival of Song that, fifteen years after its inception, it's no longer eye-popping to find on the programs of New York recitals material culled not only from the French and German canon but from music-halls, Latin America and Broadway. Even singers who've never appeared under the NYFOS aegis have profited from the repertory choices and basic principles propounded by founders Michael Barrett and Steven Blier (a contributor to OPERA NEWS). Chief among these is utter poise: through detailed preparation, canny musicianship, textual precision and innate respect for both the material (whatever its source) and the audience, NYFOS singers are prepared for any eventuality. Singing in any language or style, conveying any emotion, finalizing the program minutes before the concert begins -- none of this seems to faze the NYFOS alumni. Though NYFOS boasts few really big voices, its roster usually does present smart young interpretive artists (their smartness enhanced by collaboration with Barrett and Blier).
On May 22, in Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, NYFOS celebrated its fifteenth anniversary with a concert. Opening the event, Blier promised that this evening's celebration wouldn't rival the epic proportions of James Levine's eight-hour twenty-fifth-anniversary concert at the Met -- however, at three hours, and across a great variety of music, there was much to hear, perhaps a trifle too much to absorb. Strictly democratic, NYFOS presented about a dozen singers, without according star billing to any; each made multiple contributions to the evening. Nevertheless, some contributions were more equal than others.
Mezzo-soprano Joan Morris and her husband, composer/pianist William Bolcom paved the road to NYFOS in their recitals in the 1970s; they took the stage for a rollicking, pitch-perfect (though too speedy) "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" (by Arlen) and melting "Places to Live" (by Bolcom). Soprano Jennifer Aylmer dominated the first half, in a series of Spanish-language and Brazilian songs (opposite baritone Hugh Russell); with immaculate tone and unshakable linguistic confidence, she proved both sexy and sidesplitting. Russell seemed tentative at the outset (thrown into service as a last-minute replacement for tenor Eric Cutler, who was ill), but he rallied for Nazareth's "Odeon," a Brazilian duet with Aylmer, and for "Por una Cabeza," a swaggering tango by Gardel, in the second half. Mezzo Rinat Shaham delivered a flavorful, highly idiomatic "La femme -- notre petite compagne," associated with Yvette Guilbert.
Tenor Peter Kazaras ripped through Weill's "Tchaikovsky" and won big laughs with Eisler's "There's Nothing Quite Like Money." Soprano Amy Burton's slinky delivery of "Penelope," a song by her husband, John Musto, stilled the notably restless audience; she exulted in Bernstein's "A Julia de Burgos." Short of Blier's phenomenally accomplished playing, the evening's best demonstration of NYFOS poise came from baritone William Sharp, who ticked off a poignant "Das bescheidene Wünschlein" (by Schoeck), an uproarious "Penny Candy" (by Blitzstein) and a time-stopping "Ask Me Again" (by Gershwin). A NYFOS mascot, soprano Karen Holvik sang Gordon Jenkins's "This Is All I Ask" with tender purity, followed by soprano Cyndia Sieden's luminous account, almost childlike in its simplicity, of Mozart's "Nehmt meinem Dank."
Baritone Kurt Ollmann, another NYFOS stalwart, never quite got to the heart of his songs, Rorem's "The Wave" and Chabrier's "Lied." Also on the program were soprano Elizabeth Shammash, tenor Ross Hauck and baritone Ryan Taylor, joining Holvik and Burton for two quartet numbers, in which Taylor really distinguished himself. The entire company assembled for Bernstein's "Nachlied," a fitting finale.
Before a cheering audience largely drawn from New York's Greek-American communities, Greek soprano Irini Tsirakidis confirmed and even enhanced the excellent impression she'd made in Dallas in Rossini's Ermione (see OPERA NEWS, April 2003). Singing the same role in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall, under the baton of Peter Tiboris, Tsirakidis had little need of her printed score, preferring to stand center-stage and enact the drama of Rossini's tragically indecisive princess (heard June 3). With gesture, movement and facial expression, she gave a fully realized theatrical interpretation of sizzling intensity. Perhaps more importantly, the superior acoustics of Carnegie Hall proved more congenial to her instrument than did those of the notorious Fair Park Music Hall in Dallas. The metallic edge that marred some high notes in Dallas was seldom in evidence in New York, and she sang with seamless, full-bodied tone and sometimes startling power. She made ingenious use of vocal color, now girlish and cajoling, now plaintive, now snarling. It's clear she's studied Callas's recordings -- and photographs -- and coincidentally she was awarded Dallas Opera's Maria Callas prize on the night of her Carnegie concert (which seems to have been, unannounced, her New York debut).
She found a kindred spirit in tenor Barry Banks, as the hapless Oreste. Though slight of stature, he possesses a commanding, even frightening stage presence: one readily believed that Oreste was dangerous. He sang with clarion tone and pinpoint accuracy, furiously flinging off coloratura passagework. His powerhouse entrance number whetted one's appetite for the opera's conclusion, a harum-scarum duet between Ermione and Oreste, and Tsirakidis and Banks rose to the occasion with some of the most thrilling singing Carnegie Hall had heard all season. Tenor Bruce Ford returned to the role of Pirro, which he'd sung in Dallas; like Tsirakidis, he profited from the superior acoustics at Carnegie and from his recent immersion in his role, singing with tonal beauty and persuasive characterization. Mezzo-soprano Victoria Livengood sang the fourth principal role, the captive Andromaca; though she still has a wide range and impressive power, no two registers sound alike, and the effects she creates are sometimes distinctly unpleasant to hear.
Tiboris, who directs Mid-America Productions, under the aegis of which this performance took place, conducted the Manhattan Philharmonic, with genuine appreciation for the material and its needs -- but with limited success. Rossini's score, pointing the way to a more emotionally direct musical language and to the works of Bellini and Donizetti, makes substantial rhythmic and dynamic demands on an ensemble. Terrible coordination problems derailed some of the most complex (and rewarding) numbers, particularly the Act I finale, a free-for-all for the principals, orchestra and chorus (the Arcadian Chorale, of Matewan, NJ, and New York's Richmond Choral Society). But Tiboris has the satisfaction of beating New York City Opera to the punch: that company will stage Ermione (with Banks as Oreste) in April 2004.
WILLIAM V. MADISON
At Carnegie Hall on May 19, Opera Orchestra of New York, under the baton of Eve Queler, presented Rossini's La Donna del Lago. Written in 1815 for Naples and fashioned for star singers well-known to the composer, this is surely the greatest of Rossini's operas not to have entered the standard repertory. Walter Scott's narrative poem, The Lady of the Lake, furnished librettist Andrea Leone Tottola with plenty of scenic inspiration (lochs, forests and countryside) and inspired Rossini to craft some of his most elegiac, serene melodies.
The plot involves rebellious Scottish clansmen who meet up with their king, disguised as a lowly tenor. The love story revolves around the rebel leader's daughter, who remains true to the contralto hero, thus disappointing two other gentlemen suitors. This performance united some of OONY's favorite singers -- Ruth Ann Swenson as Ellen, the daughter; Stephanie Blythe as Malcolm, her lover; and Bruce Fowler as bad-guy Roderick Dhu. As King James V incognito, Greek tenor Mario Zeffiri made his American debut. A graduate of OONY's Young Artists Program, Jason Grant, was featured as Ellen's father, the rebel chieftain Douglas.
One of the more entertaining non-vocal aspects of Queler's performances is the concert etiquette of singers struggling to convey character without costumes, props or staging. While Swenson's singing approached perfection in every way (golden tone that filled the house, a richly beautiful middle voice, phrasing both filigreed and voluptuous, though without much dynamic variety), her demeanor smacked of silliness. Except when smirking or rolling her eyes during a colleague's cadenza, her look was one of bemused detachment, betraying nothing theatrical; by her final flashy aria, "Tanti affetti" (the cabaletta of which includes tricky figuration, chromatic cadenzas, and was capped by a thrilling high E flat), it was clear that, for Swenson, this was just one really fun concert.
Zeffiri showed off his concentrated, high-lying voice with true Rossinian style and plenty of stamina, handling the role's lyricism and fireworks in an engagingly visceral manner. Although totally off-book, he courteously turned pages along with his colleagues, and when he could no longer tolerate the confines of his music stand, he would step forward with an ingratiating earnestness, leaning eagerly into the audience and enjoying his deserved ovation.
Fowler was obviously having an off night and seemed to lose heart after failing to nail his high C at the close of his entrance aria. Nevertheless, his more honeyed sound contrasted nicely with Zeffiri in the splendid Act II trio. Grant sounded commanding enough, though rather monochromatic.
If Blythe is not already among the handful of greatest singers in the world, then she is only one more ravishing messa di voce away. Her vocal authority alone is staggering, but she doesn't stop there: her entire performance in the kilt role of Malcolm was true, artistic and dramatically riveting. She exhibited a magnificent low register (intoning the baritonal phrase "tutto destesto" without vulgarity or comic effect), fleet passagework (genuinely "on the voice"), great variety of color and a breathtaking trill.
The orchestra appeared to enjoy the music and hung onto Queler's occasionally loopy beat. (She rarely subdivides, and the soprano/alto duet, "Vivere io non potrò," got off to a frighteningly rocky start.) The all-important horn section was especially fine; the solo horn in fact redeemed an otherwise lackluster introduction to "O fiamma soave."
JUDITH MALAFRONTE
The ever-intriguing Eos Orchestra, under artistic director and conductor Jonathan Sheffer, performed its final concert of the season, titled "Mass en Masse," on May 22 at the Ethical Culture Society. The typically creative program included the Stravinsky Mass, the Mozart "Coronation" Mass and the world premiere of Night Mass by Sebastian Currier, Eos's composer-in-residence. Sheffer, a self-described agnostic, said in a preconcert talk that the experience of working with musical settings of the Latin Mass, in all their splendid variety, is so bolstering and uplifting that "we doubters even doubt ourselves." Certainly from a musical standpoint, there was no doubting the faith, affirmation and passion involved in the concert.
In a virtually immaculate performance of the Stravinsky, Sheffer allowed every beat to have weight, so that the magnificent dissonances, which somehow carry the reverberance of antiquity, resonated fully. However, his focus on harmonic detail never interfered with the serenely flowing lines of the piece. The ten wind and brass players from the Eos Orchestra stood at their music stands, with Voices of Ascension, the chorus, seated in front of them. This atypical arrangement allowed for extraordinarily good balance, showcasing the excellent intonation and ensemble of both chorus and instrumentalists.
Night Mass followed. Currier, who has said he never would have composed a mass if Sheffer hadn't commissioned him, has created a probing, evocative, highly substantial and immediately accessible work, with one movement that is an absolute knock-out. For Currier, advances in science create uncertainty, which collides with the unwavering belief at the heart of the Mass. As a reflection of this, he replaced the "Credo" with a playful but searching text by Thomas Bolt, entitled "Incertum" ("Uncertainty"), that contemplates the mysteries of the cosmos. The music, which has a dizzying, perpetuum mobile-style accompaniment, is simultaneously disconcerting and exhilarating; the vocal and instrumental writing rival each other in imaginativeness. But while this movement was the undisputed highlight, the other sections of Night Mass had an equally powerful, if subtler, impact. Instead of the customary celebratory burst at the beginning of the "Gloria," soft solo voices from the chorus pass around the opening syllables antiphonally, delicately accompanied by vibes, which evoke both the stars of Currier's night and the isolation of those questing for faith. The modal colorings of the "Sanctus" and "Agnus Dei" recall plainchant, the encroaching and receding dissonances giving us a window into the composer's conflicting experiences of wonder and doubt.
After those two captivating pieces, the Mozart "Coronation" Mass was something of an anti-climax, though the performance was perfectly fine. Voices of Ascension resumed the standard location -- behind the orchestra -- to make room for the vocal soloists in front. Predictably, the choral impact was slightly lessened. The soloists (soprano Arianna Zuckerman, mezzo Beth Clayton, tenor Wesley Rogers, and bass-baritone Kevin Burdette) seemed slightly ill at ease but sang well nonetheless. Zuckerman's solo movement, the "Agnus Dei," was delivered with earnest clarity and an attractive, rounded sound.
JOSHUA ROSENBLUM
CLEVELAND
The Cleveland Orchestra closed its 200203 season with concert performances of Verdi's Don Carlo in the four-act version from 1884 (heard June 5 at Severance Hall). The only cut was of the role of the Herald, though the underused Lerma easily could have taken that role as well. The concert stage involved a raised center platform and two smaller platforms on either side. While this occasionally made the characters' conversations difficult, it also added symbolism. With the Inquisitor on one side and King Philip on the other, the physical and dramatic gulf between them could not have been greater, and the drama remained intense.
American tenor Marcus Haddock, replacing a previously announced singer, took the title role quite ably, his dark, burnished tone embracing the entire range of the part with ease. His phrasing and dramatic involvement were also impressive. Another replacement, Samuel Ramey, sang Filippo. His well-known voice was a joy to hear, and his dramatic projection showed his long association with the part. Simon Keenlyside sang Posa with admirable vocalism and musicality. He was, however, the only soloist using a printed score, and this blunted his dramatic involvement. Hao Jiang Tian was a stalwart force as the Grand Inquisitor.
Miriam Gauci's truly Italianate soprano suited the role of Elisabetta, and her dynamic control in the final aria and duet were wonderful to hear. Yvonne Naef's Eboli was a delightful surprise. Though perhaps less well-known than her colleagues, she offered unfaltering vocal command, and her "O don fatale," sung with great passion, brought the performance to a lengthy halt for applause. Stephen Geber's cello solo at the beginning of Act III was poignantly played.
Franz Welser-Möst's command of the massed forces was complete. Though the orchestra occasionally showed that Italian opera (and Don Carlo particularly) is not their usual métier, it was still a joy to hear such a high-quality ensemble playing this prickly score. Welser-Möst's shaping of long scenes was sure, and he exercised keen dynamic control of the orchestra, never covering the singers. The chorus, trained by Robert Porco, was a worthy participant in the proceedings. The standing ovation was well deserved.
ALAN MONTGOMERY
MOSCOW
Whenever an opera company comes up with a misguided production, one wonders what kind of preliminary discussions went on between management and the director. Viktor Kramer's expressed views on Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila would surely have been grounds for concern. In a newspaper interview he called the libretto "nonsense" and suggested that a concert performance might be "the only possibility." Generations of Russian children engrossed by the drama of Lyudmila's abduction on her wedding day and her rescue by her valiant fiancé Ruslan might beg to differ, long haul though the opera can be. But, conveniently, Kramer had been engaged for a "semi-staged" performance at the Bolshoi. Instead of singers in formal dress acting on a concert stage, however, there were sets and lavish costumes (designed by Alexander Orlov and Irina Cherednikova). Elaborate triangular towers encased the chorus, their heads and torsos emerging from the tops. But the acting of the principals, confined to a small square surface jutting over the orchestra pit, amounted to next to nothing. Crucial events were wholly ignored in favor of the kind of free association of visual events to words and music that characterizes German Regietheater at its worst. Early on, characters carried gold pyramids that had nothing to do with the plot, and so it went. Still, one has to admire the ingenuity of someone who conceives and implements the idea of using mechanized string basses instead of dancers for the Act IV ballet sequence -- with their endpins planted on the stage, the instruments actually managed to twirl around and were illuminated from within. It was quite a sight.
But I suspect the audience, which included President Putin and Valery Gergiev in the "tsar's box" (at least at the start, which was delayed for their arrival), wanted more. Alas, even the musical side fell flat, though to his credit conductor Alexander Vedernikov played the score uncut and used a new edition reflecting previously unconsulted materials in St. Petersburg and Berlin. The Bolshoi also bought a large assortment of period-style brass and other instruments especially for the occasion. But the normally frisky overture lacked punch, and Vedernikov's conducting lacked vitality elsewhere as well. Given the listless musical and dramatic leadership, it is small wonder that the promising young singers Yekaterina Morozova and Taras Shtonda made little of the title roles. Alexandra Durseyeva was out of her element as Ratmir, but another mezzo, Irina Dolzhenko, excelled as Naina, and the black-voiced bass Valery Gilmanov made an excellent Farlaf. Mariya Gavrilova brought energy and luster to Gorislava's aria, and there were two fine tenors in Vitaly Panfilov (Finn) and Maksim Paster (Bayan). This was originally intended as an interim step on the way to a full production next year, but it apparently cost so much that the plan now is in doubt. On the other hand, there can't be much demand to see this version again.
GEORGE LOOMIS
58: © Wiener Staatsoper GmbH/Axel Zeininger (Tristan), © Javier del Real 2003 (Merlin); 60: © Catherine Ashmore 2003 (Hamlet), © Clive Barda/ArenaPAL 2003 (Trojans); 61: © Catherine Ashmore 2003 (Jerry Springer), © Alvaro Yañez 2003 (Cenerentola); 62: © M.N. Robert 2003; 63: © Wilfried Hösl/Bayerische Staatsoper 2003; 64: courtesy La Scala; 65: © Michael Daniel 2003 (Handmaid's Tale), © George Hixson/HGO 2003 (Little Prince); 66: © William Struhs 2003; 67: © Liz Lauren 2003; 68: © Chris Bennion 2003 (Fidelio), © Debra Hesser 2003 (Pearl Fishers)
OPERA NEWS, August 2003 Copyright © 2003 The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.Arthurians Marton, Vaness, in Madrid
[For reports on the rest of Sarasota's season, see opera news on line.]
Where's the remote?: Jerry Springer: The Opera
Abstract espresso: Cenerentola ensemble in Ginefri's bar
Plowright, Mattila at the Châtelet
Liberation: Langan (Rocco), Eaglen (Leonore) and Margison (Florestan) in Fidelio finale
Ainsley, Daniels in Munich Saul
Nucci (Francesco, in headdress), Giorgio Giuseppini (Loredano) at La Scala
Todd Thomas: twice a Thane in Sarasota
As seen by Sendak: Hart, COT's Brundibár
Complete package: Petrova as Lakmé
Seeing with the heart: Rhodes, Irvin
Bishop, a "poignant" Handmaid
Dessay, Keenlyside in ROH Hamlet
Daszak and Parry can't ascend to the heights of Berlioz's Trojans, at ENO