Likely Impossibilities

La forza del destino: Showdown at the Staatsoper corral

September 15, 2010 8 Comments

Preziosilla is onto Carlos’s game.
(Note: picture is a different cast, though same Preziosilla.)
(Photo: Opera Chic)

Of all the caves in the world, you had to walk into mine. La forza del destino might not be the most outwardly coherent of operas, but Verdi didn’t call it an “opera of ideas” for nothing, and it has an agenda under all that shaggy discursiveness. Unfortunately David Pountney’s Wiener Staatsoper production, shorn of almost half an hour of music, has the ideas underlined and highlighted and little of the dark chaos. This messily-staged revival and Philippe Auguin’s conducting went unstoppably forward like the plot’s bullet fired by mistake, and despite four strong singers it all felt rather off. And the cowboys, well, they were a mistake too. Giddyap, pardner.

Verdi, La forza del destino. Production by David Pountney, conducted by Philippe Auguin. With Eva-Maria Westbroek (Leonora), Fabio Armiliato (Alvaro), Zeljko Lucic (Don Carlos), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Padre Guardiano), Tomasz Konieczny (Fra Melitone), Nadia Krasteva (Preziosilla)

If you’ve ever met me, I’ve probably told you how you have to read War and Peace. (Because you do. It’s wonderful in every way. It’s my favorite novel.) La forza del destino is kind of like War and Peace. Shit happens, some personal and some global-historical, and sometimes there’s little the characters can do to control it. They wander through things that are larger then themselves. Some glory in the chaos (Preziosilla) , others try to hide from it (Leonora, eventually Alvaro). In the opera, you don’t have Tolstoy’s narrative voice telling you all the fateful stuff. But if you’re at the Staatsoper, you have David Pountney, who’s even more pedantic.

As suggested by the opening video of a butterfly starting an enormous wheel, the production is about coincidences and unintended consequences (I was sadly distracted through the whole overture). Christianity provides a kind of anchor for these characters adrift, who finally all end up assailing the monastery for help and guidance. The inn is a place of momentary respite, where many Bibles seem to provide a veneer of security. The period is sometime during the twentieth century, but only vaguely so (there are still swords for dueling). As an interpretation it makes sense, but it hits you over the head a few times too often. Moreover, its extreme minimalism and attendant demurral to create a world outside the principal characters undermine the portrayal of larger forces (of DESTINY) at work. When we’re suddenly at war in Act 3 the means are not great enough to give us any real atmosphere, just some halfhearted projections. Destiny’s force never seems adequately cataclysmic.

Crosses, crosses everywhere (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper)

The sets are simple and OK enough, but the chorus in the inn scene is a somewhat inexplicable band of sexy dancing cowboys, including also sexy dancing cowgirls, and later at war we gets sexy dancing nurse nuns. I think most opera suffers from an excess of good taste but I’m going to make an exception here. We have lost any opportunity to establish who these people are in favor of sexy dancing cowgirls. If the dancing had been fun or meaningful, it would have been alright, but it was just awkwardly bad. The execution as a whole was so messy that I really can’t say how good or bad the production as originally conceived was. The buttons in particular were hopelessly off, with some awkward silences and interruptions–the audience had no clue when they should clap and it made the reception feel tepid just because it was unclear. (The lights, blocking, and conductor should always signal when we should applaud.)

The score suffered from some major cuts, particularly in the choral and minor character material of Act 3. Not that I really miss Preziosilla’s “Al suon del tamburo” and Trabuco’s aria as such, but they give this opera its texture, its wildly incoherent patchwork of random events and moments that confuses the characters as much as it does me. Making Forza neater seems to go against its spirit. And the one major rearrangement–reordering some scenes in Act 3 so the tenor and baritone get a break between their duets and then cutting directly to the Rataplan–destroys the wonderful sequence of the Act 3 finale entirely.

Opening scene (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper)

Conductor Philippe Auguin favored a fast and loud account of the score that, while sometimes exciting, similarly allowed for few excursions into anything. We’re getting this sucker done in under three hours or else, he seemed to say (my recording [Levine] is two hours fifty-six minutes total and the intermission was 20-25 minutes). By the time Leonora pled for pace, pace, I was thinking, you and me both, sister.

The singing was mostly very good, though not transcendental enough to overrule these production and conductor-ly deficiencies. Fabio Armiliato offered solid and admirable Italian tenoring with good phrasing and intonation, fine coloring and very loud and rich high notes, faulted by a muscley and dry tone at the passaggio and below. I feel kind of bad for never warming to him, but he failed to grab me somehow. His acting is generic but he does manage to look impressively Jesus-like in Act 4 in a long white robe with his short beard and longish hair. I think this was unintentional. If it wasn’t, I have no idea what it was supposed to signify.

Act 3. Several of the upper parts of this set were MIA last night.
Photo: Der Standard

Eva-Maria Westbroek has a fabulous soprano, lush and creamy and even right up to the top of the staff. Above that it gets steelier, but not unpleasantly so (that is to say, her first two “malediziones” were better than the last one). I would liked to have heard more rhythmic flexibility and Italianate phrasing from her, but Augiun was conducting like he would slow down for no woman or man, so I’m not going to say she couldn’t do it elsewhere. She did some marvelous acting when onstage alone. And as for her future role as Anna-Nicole Smith, well, if Anna-Nicole had had better taste she would have wished she could look that good in a pantsuit.

Zeljko Lucic has plenty of volume for Don Carlos and sang his aria with real beauty and musicality, but he seems too fundamentally decent and his voice too lyrically gentle for a villain who kills his own sister. I would love to hear him as Boccanegra, but am not convinced of his Verdi-villain status. Tomasz Konieczny, as Melitone, had a metallic edge to his voice that made me think he would have been more suitable, if less opulent. Ferruccio Furlanetto is not the type to be confined to near-last in a cast list and I’m rather surprised to see him singing such a small role as Padre Guardiano. It was lovely, and his duet with Westbroek had, along with Lucic’s aria, the best singing of the night, but, still. It’s minor. Nadia Krasteva as Preziosilla had the misfortune to get totally lost in Auguin’s manical tempo for the Rataplan, but otherwise didn’t sound bad and, hey, she can do both a split and a backbend.

Finally, a Great Moment in Opera Titles: “The bullet in his chest worries me.” (“La palla che ha nel petto mi spaventa.”) (Even in Italian it is somewhat dry, but “mi spaventa” is more properly “scares me.”)

Bows, another lousy in-house photo from me:

Next: The Semele prima is tomorrow but I need a break and think I’ll go on Friday.

Review

Riccardo Chailly and the case of the missing violas

September 11, 2010 No Comments

(I would first like to welcome all of you who followed Franz Welser-Möst’s Facebook and Twitter links. Danke schön for the link, Maestro, or rather thanks to whoever writes the maestro’s tweets and Facebook.)

The bows on the center-right side of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig were moving furiously, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Herein I consider whether Schumann really was a crappy orchestrator after all, an obscure Mendelssohn piece that perhaps should stay that way, and some much more rewarding things about Friday night’s Musikverein concert, including some fine violin-playing from Frank Peter Zimmermann.

But first let’s talk anniversaries. Haul out your coffin full of poetry, because this year marks the 200th anniversary of Schumann’s birth. It seems like we just had a Schumann year. Because we did–2006 was the 150th anniversary of his death. But like Prokofiev’s proximity in death to Stalin, Schumann had to share that anniversary with Mozart, and didn’t really get much attention outside pianists and a few lieder-singers. This time he gets to share with both Chopin and Mahler. So, yeah, screwed again, in Vienna at least. Even the pianists and lieder-singers have other events to celebrate this time.

But his hometown orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, didn’t forget, even if their Vienna celebration was not always spotless. They managed to sneak birthday boy Mahler in there too.

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Riccardo Chailly; Sept. 10, 2010, Musikverein. Mendelssohn: Trompeten-Ouvertüre, op. 101; Schumann, Violin Concerto in d minor, WoO 23; Overtüre zu Lord Byrons “Manfred,” op. 115; Symphony No. 4, op. 120 (Mahler edition).

I don’t think Mendelssohn wrote any bad pieces of music, but the Trumpet Overture is not one of his more memorable. Lots of contrapuntal business plus endless sequences means it always seems to be purposefully headed somewhere, but it never arrives at any good themes. The orchestra was tight and precise, but the small string sections were frequently overpowered by the winds and the inner voices of the strings seemed inaudible, even in the dream acoustics of the Musikverein. Eponymous trumpets sounded fine, but I would have traded this one in for a good Hebrides or Midsummer any day.

The Schumann Violin Concerto is a problem work, suppressed for decades after the composer’s death because it supposedly contained signs of his incipient madness. There have been several rehabilitation attempts that claim the concerto’s strangeness is really great innovation. Either way, the piece has some interesting moments but they don’t really hang together. Frank Peter Zimmermann dispatched the awkward violin writing with effortless clarity and elegance and virtuosity in the last movement. The already-quiet orchestra seemed to recede entirely at most points. The many piano-like arpeggios sound like a warm-up for the Brahms Violin Concerto, Zimmermann put some good lyricism in them but I’m still not convinced.

The second half of the concert was much better. Both the Manfred Overture and the Symphony No. 4 were performed in Mahler’s pared-down editions (I wondered if the man near me with an Urtext symphony score had brought it for comparison or was very confused). Two anniversaries for the price of one! Maybe it was the Mahlerization but the balance between strings and winds was considerably better, though I still had trouble with the strings’ inner voices. I’m not sure what the tempo marking on the Romazne movement is (sorry, didn’t shell out for a program), but it sounded fast, almost an allegretto. Lovely wind solos, though. Chailly proved a master of pacing in both, particularly the symphony’s dramatic transition into the final movement, and the last few minutes of the symphony were fantastic, a great end to an uneven concert.

I know using Mahler or other touched-up editions is outré these days, but maybe Schumann does need it. Chailly defends Mahler’s edition in an interview in the Musikverein magazine, saying that Schumann’s orchestration really was too thick and Mahler gets closer to what Schumann wanted to do. I’m not even going there. Not today, at least. Municipal elections are in a few weeks and four political parties are parked on the four corners of the intersection nearest my apartment, and I’m finding the steady pffffts of Die Grünen blowing up balloons distracting. Those better be biodegradable balloons, guys.

Review

Tannhäuser: Crazy in love

September 9, 2010 1 Comment

This looks familiar, I’m not sure why.

Dich, teure Halle, grüss’ ich wieder! After four years with no Wiener Staatsoper in my life, I returned last night, and if this Tannhäuser is any kind of omen I’m glad I did, because it was awesome. Welser-Möst is doing great things with the orchestra, there’s some fantastic singing, and well, if the virgin-whore complex is getting you down (it certainly gets old for me), Claus Guth has a production for you.

Wagner, Tannhäuser (Dresden version). Wiener Staatsoper, 8.9.2010. Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst with Johan Botha (Tanhäuser), Anja Kampe (Elisabeth), Matthias Goerne (Wolfram von Eschenbach), Michaela Schuster (Venus), Ain Anger (Hermann). Production by Claus Guth.

Guth sets the opera in fin-de-siècle Vienna in the early days of Freud and Schnitzler. Venus is a figment of Tannhäuser’s imagination, his attempt to live with emotional truth and unearth his unconscious mind rather than the live with social hypocrisy of his comrades (who keep their sex lives more neatly compartmentalized). Unfortunately, this obsession results in ostracism and (socially induced?) mental illness. The self-harming pilgrims are, post-pardon, confined to a psych ward, Tannhäuser’s voyage to Rome seems to be in the mind only, and Elisabeth kills herself with an overdose of Tannhäuser’s pills.

We open to see… not the usual orgy but another curtain, exactly like the one that just parted (no ballet, it’s the Dresden version). For a second I thought I had stepped into a Robert Carsen production by mistake. But no, it is the stage on which Tannhäuser imagines a double of himself cavorting with Venus, a fantasy he finally leaves. But even afterwards, the oddly stopping and starting action, rooms that fall apart, and surreal moments suggest that large sections of what we see are through Tannhäuser’s unstable eyes.

I liked this production a lot. It’s arguably an indirect interpretation, avoiding much of what Wagner would have thought the opera is about (the artist-opera aspects are solely metaphoric), but Guth wants to show that Wagner’s good woman/bad woman and redemption thing aren’t unearthly matters at all, they are just means of social control (we’re still in pre-Tristan land, remember). Virtue and Christianity are all social constructions, ones which Tannhäuser attempts to defy at his peril. In Act 3, this gets a little on the convoluted side–I was not always sure where Tannhäuser’s social outcast status stops and his apparent actual madness starts–but it mostly works. The program claims this is the Dresden version, but Venus does come back at the end so I think it’s a Paris-Dresden combo.

The production speaks largely through images and tableux rather than acting. Much of the blocking is stylized and static. Maybe this is because it’s an underrehearsed revival, maybe it’s because many of the singers don’t seem to be able to act, but it seems like it’s a part of the production. (According to a woman I spoke with during intermission, the June premiere of this production was a lot more detailed on the Personenregie end.) The sets are gorgeous, the prologue and pilgrims wandering through a mostly-empty stage (the shepherd is a junior-sized Tannhäuser double), the more concrete places all reproductions of actual places in Vienna.

Tannhäuser reenters the world via the seedy, faux-exotic Hotel Oriental (which still exists), where his comrades relieve their unconsciouses by discreetly renting by the hour, unlike Tannhäuser’s more prolonged and indiscreet escapades. The hall of song is nothing other than part of the Staatsoper itself (the room with the composer’s busts that faces the balcony looking out over the Ring). Setting the opera in the opera house itself is kind of an overused trick but it never stops working. This room is a Baroque imitation and social space, here representing a stiff and self-conscious society with the outdated custom of the song contest. Finally, Act 3 takes place in Otto Wagner’s asylum in Steinhof, this era’s attempt to deal more rationally with its outcasts. The costumes are all realistic fin-de-siècle, and it looks very good as well as being functional and unfussy.

The Staatsoper’s orchestra was in excellent form. Franz Welser-Möst’s conducting was grand, losing a bit of impetuosity but making up for it with nobility. Tempos were moderately quick but never rushed (though the violins came to grief on one or two of those many long downward runs). Ensembles were mostly clear and balanced. At the loudest moments the orchestra occasionally overpowered the soloists, but for Wagner this was very singer-friendly conducting. The chorus sounded super.

Johan Botha sang Tannhäuser with astonishing ease, beauty, and tireless power. After what usually passes for Heldentenor singing to hear something like this is balm for the ears. But with that amazing ease seemed to come a lack of dramatic involvement, musical shaping, and variations of color for most of the score. You felt he might as well be reading the phone book, and while him reading the phone book would be pretty and loud it would not be interesting. His singing is impressive, but rarely affecting. And the man cannot act his way out of a paper bag (it must be said, a very large paper bag). So an incredible and memorable performance in some ways, but lacking in others.

At the end, Tannhäuser finally sees Venus in the guise of Elisabeth.

Anja Kampe as Elisabeth was new to me, and I thought she was fantastic. She’s got a big, silvery, bright voice that seems destined for bigger and less lyrical roles than this one, but did a good job with the delicate parts of the score as well as raising the roof with the loud ones. She was also the best actor in the production, making the cardboard Saint Elisabeth close to a real and confused young woman. (If the ticket gods of Bavaria are generous, I should be seeing her as Leonore in Fidelio in Munich later this season, and I really hope I will.)

Michaela Schuster sounded shrill as Venus, but put everything into it and vamped convincingly. Matthias Goerne sang Wolfram von Eschenbach with velvety tone (excluding some weak top notes) and great musicality, but was quite stiff onstage. His Evening Star song was lovely, but, staged as a contemplation of suicide, rarely has someone pointing a gun at their own head been so dull. The action’s all vocal here.

A great start to the season, I hope this is representative. Forza del Destino and possibly also Semele next week.

Bows (sorry, hopefully my in-house photography will improve soon, the one with flash was even worse):

Review

Bad CD Covers: Lied me down the garden path

August 17, 2010 4 Comments

I admit that whenever I listen to Die schöne Müllerin, I have great trouble imagining what the green-loving lady looks like. Berlin Classics to the rescue!

I think they really captured it, don’t you? The frosty highlights are just right. For the, uh, record, the singer on this CD is Siegfried Lorenz (not pictured).

Hyperion and Graham Johnson have done great services to lieder. This cover photo encapsulates the mini-drama of a good lied, with more people than usual:

Jonathan Lemalu: First Maltman takes all of Opus 24, now he’s taking my light.
Mark Padmore: I’m either running a deeply crazy campaign to represent the fine state of Kentucky in the United States Senate or am about to break into Schumann’s WoO 121, you decide.
Christopher Maltman: I might be in the back, but check these dramatic shadows, ladies.
Jonathan Lemalu: Who said the dress code was blue shirts?
Mark Padmore: Washington has no business deciding whether these songs should be known as WoO121 or Opus Posth. 121. Or whether wearing the wrong color shirt would result in you being left in a bluish shadow.
Christopher Maltman: No such questions about my Opus 24. Or my snazzy striped shirt.
Jonathan Lemalu: I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at over there anyways.

Elsewhere, Hyperion shows a charming literalism that demands their recordings be taken seriously:

“I recorded a CD of songs about death. I should have seen this coming, dammit.”

Simon Keenlyside is amused, but the other three are embarrassed.

I have uncovered evidence that the Met is doing looks-based casting:

…when hiring for Wozzeck.

“They had a nasty fight regarding the augmented sixth in ‘Der Doppelgänger.’ It was all we could do just to get them to record ‘Die Taubenpost,’ much do a photo shoot together.” (Just forget the “live” part, please.)

Many things can make one melancholy:

I suppose accidentally sticking one’s finger into an electrical outlet would be one of them. Another would be getting stuck with this photo on one’s album cover.

Oooo, look, a Szymanowski CD!

Um… errrr…. OK. The Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess are involved here, I hope? Please tell me they are.

In the next installment we will consider the higher budgets and bigger egos of the aria CD.

Note: This has been done several times before, with some spectacularly tacky examples on Too Many Tristans and hilarious captions on Proper Discord. I’ve tried not to reproduce any of their finds.

Cover connoisseurs are advised to also check out The Book Cover Archive and Awful Library Books.

Review

Der ferne Klang: Opera in the age of mechanical reproduction

July 31, 2010 2 Comments

Schreker, Der ferne Klang. Bard Summerscape, 7/30/10. American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein, production by Thaddeus Strassberger with Yamina Maamar (Grete), Mathias Schulz (Fritz), Corey Kern (The Count/Rudolf), Susan Marie Pierson (lots of parts), Matthew Burns (Innkeeper/Policeman), lots more. Full information and tickets here.

Act 1, with World War I backdrop

Every year, the Bard Music Festival, located on the rural Bard College campus around 100 miles north of New York City, and its accompanying “Summerscape” events focus on the works of a single composer “and his world.” ([Sic], no “her” yet.) This year the composer is Alban Berg, but as usual the major opera production is a work of a lesser-known contemporary, here Franz Schreker’s 1912 opera Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound). It’s an amazing score most memorable for its incredible orchestration, but this iteration of it, despite an interesting production and strong singing, has too many musical weaknesses to do more than hint at Schreker’s strengths.

The semi-protagonist, a composer named Fritz, leaves his girlfriend Grete in search of said sound. But it turns out that the plot is really more about the havoc this causes on Grete than it is about Fritz at all. Ten years later (Act II), she’s in a Venetian bordello and he’s horrified to run into her, five years after that (Act III) she’s a common prostitute and he’s a composer still one elusive sound short of a successful opera. But an encounter with Grete is all he needs to realize that her love was the sound all along. Awwwww. Unfortunately Fritz starts thinking about this–I left the sound to look for the sound!–and perhaps it’s the effort involved in figuring out this circular logic that kills the poor dude in Grete’s arms before he can add the sound to his opera. Lucky us, we heard it back in the overture (it involves a celesta). Don’t think about the meta-ness too much, you might end up like Fritz.

Despite being flip about the plot, I think this is a really underrated opera. But that’s not because of the libretto, which Schreker wrote himself and possibly shouldn’t have. It’s because of the music, which sounds like a bipolar and slightly stoned Richard Strauss, only better. It’s tonal-ish, with the collage of found music and timbral effects of Mahler and the delicacy of later Berg. It’s overly intense, overstuffed, overripe, and overpowering. The orchestration is almost limitlessly colorful.

Unfortunately, last night’s performance only suggested its richness; you might say Schreker’s sounds remained somewhat distant. As led by Leon Botstein, always a better musical evangelist than he is a conductor, the orchestra sounded ragged and unfocused. Very few details ever emerged from the complexity of the score, the entire account lacked shape and momentum. Sometimes it worked, just because this music is so good, but it was despite the performance, not because of it. (And reducing one of the best passages, the interlude in the middle of Act 3, to table-moving music was unfortunate.) The positioning of the Venetian act’s stage bands directly above the pit completely ruined the multi-perspective effect of this amazing soundscape.

Grete in Act 2

However, much of the singing was very good. Yamina Maamar as Grete has a big, solid voice, her bio describes her as a former mezzo but her upper register sounds great. Mathias Schulz was less pleasant as Fritz, but sang forcefully if without finesse. I think both have sung these roles before, and seemed very confident even through the overall mush of the orchestral performance. The large cast of supporting characters were all well sung and most of the German diction was fantastic. (Note: when you’re sitting near the front of the orchestra, it’s a loooong way up to those surtitles. Once I remembered I speak German I didn’t have much trouble understanding it, though.)

In the program, director Thaddeus Strassberger notes that his production was inspired by the rough parallels between the opera and Schreker’s own life. So that’s how he set it. It’s an interesting concept. We start in the middle of World War I as Fritz leaves to look for the sound, when we get to Venice we’re in the decadent 1920s, for the final act we’re approaching World War II (don’t do the math). Fritz’s inability to hear the sound, his Romantic quest, becomes a symptom of modernist alienation and the much more concrete social breakdown of the interwar period. (Remember, the opera dates from 1912, so this is a speculative concept, not that I have a problem with that.)

In Act 1, we are greeted by a projection of an old photograph of birch trees: not the experience of nature but its representation. After Fritz’s departure, Grete also runs away to escape her dreadful family and, as the libretto has it, experiences a vision of sorts by the side of a lake. Here, it is instead in a movie theater, again only a representation of nature. But is it an authentic vision? According to Schreker, yes, but not Strassberger, and he has a point because it is what leads her into the 1920s Venetian bordello of Act II. Here she and the other ornamentally-attired ladies of the establishment (entire costume budget used to appropriately tacky effect) are reflected in arrays of mirrors, dizzying and deceptive, as some events from Act I seem to replay themselves. In Act III, around 1935, we have an endless hall of mirrors stretching backstage into infinity as events repeat yet again. Strassberger transforms some actual events of the libretto into Fritz’s fevered imagination, a very effective tactic.

I could take or leave the bits of Schreker biography (also: far from the first production that has tried this sort of thing), but the concept problematically seems to put the sound itself in the background. I am not sure about the loss of the Romantic longing that seems to underlie Fritz’s quest, the transformation of a spiritual crisis into a social one. Maybe this is partly Schreker’s fault by spending so much more time with Grete than Fritz, and ineffable crises are pretty hard to put on stage. The source of the sound is Grete’s Eternal Feminine self (as seen in her ecstatic forest experience that is missing here), but here the gloomy all-enveloping modernity of war and sin has seemingly eliminated any possibility of transcendence. The decadence of the 1920s has baggage that Schreker’s 1912 did not (I think it’s fair to be this picky since the production is trying to establish something so specific). A very interesting concept, but I’m not sure if it is entirely successful. It comes across as a shadow of Lulu rather than something different and interesting in its own right. Ha, Berg festival. I see.

Unfortunately, as a whole I felt that this evening represented something of a missed opportunity. The glory of this opera is its score, and when you have this much trouble hearing it, you’re missing most of the point.

Video: More Schreker! Excellent DVD of Die Gezeichneten from the Salzburg Festival

Review

Pastoral interlude: Met recital in Central Park

July 14, 2010 2 Comments

Metropolitan Opera Summer Recital Series in Central Park, 7/12/10. With Nathan Gunn, baritone; Susanna Phillips, soprano; Michael Fabiano, tenor; and Julie Gunn and Jonathan Kelly, pianists.

Several other bloggers and I packed up a picnic and headed out to Central Park last night for the annual Met concert. The weather was threatening, our picnic was derailed by a long line to get in and the confiscation of our vino, but it didn’t actually rain, there was opera, and we ate the food eventually, so all was more or less well.

The Met used to present an entire opera in concert with an orchestra for this event; this is the second year that we’ve been having recession-friendly recitals with piano instead. And it’s too bad. Piano accompaniment is fine in a small venue, but amplified through the giant Summer Stage? Not so much. And whoever thought that “Hai già vinta la causa” is a smashing idea for an opening number should never program a concert again. But the singers were winning and despite some unevenness and persistent feeling of economy, it was a pleasant evening.

Nathan Gunn was the biggest name here, joined by his wife Julie Gunn on piano, and he was best-suited of the three to the park format, questionable Mozart opener aside. He was at his best in English, including a somewhat cloying translation of “Ein Mächen oder Weibchen” that he made cute, and the final number, an intense but not over-the-top rendition of Weill’s “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” His storytelling abilities were put to excellent use in three of Bolcom’s Cabaret Songs–which I embarrassingly discovered I have not heard many of the words of for years (sadly, he did not include “Amor”–“even philosophers understood how good was the good cuz I looked so good”).

Gunn was joined by tenor Michael Fabiano and soprano Susanna Phillips, both of whom were new to me. Phillips has a gorgeous lyric soprano with a beautifully natural feel for the musical line, put to excellent use in Donna Anna’s “Non mi dir” (with some cool ornamentation). I found her “Je veux vivre” somewhat short on sparkle and trilling, but that might be a hard number to pull off in concert (though she did wear cowboy boots for it–I had to take her word for this, because I could not see her feet). Her “Can’t Help Loving That Man” was maybe not the best example of opera singers tacking musical theater, and could learn something from Gunn about understatement and good arrangements.

Tenor Michael Fabiano is famous for being a hothead but I found him the least interesting of the three. He definitely has a big talent and the voice is beautiful and solid, but I wasn’t captivated. Perhaps picking repertoire other than inevitable tenor chestnuts “Una furtiva lagrima” and “La donna è mobile” would have helped? I’m not a big fan of either aria, honestly. He also suffered from overselling in his musical theater entry, “Be My Love.” None of the singers managed very much dynamic variation, which I blame on the amplification system.

There were ensembles too! These were entertainingly semi-staged, though given no introduction as to plot or anything (only Gunn talked about any of his numbers–I think they all could have benefited from a little friendly exposition). “Au fond du temple saint” is going on the top of my new list of Numbers That Should Never Be Performed Without an Orchestra Under Any Circumstances, because I’ve never heard this lovely duet sung so well and be so underwhelming. “Sulla tomba” was awkwardly sandwiched between Bolcom and the musical theater set, but sounded good if comparatively stiff and static after the animated, casual Bolcom. Preceeding them was a sweet “Bei Männer, welche liebe fühlen.” The first half included a charming “La ci darem la mano” and the similarly charming Nemorino-Adina-Belcore duet from L’Elisir d’amore (they played the sweet and charming card many, many times in this program). As an encore we got the one piece I was surprised to not see on the initial program, the Traviata Brindisi.

I hope to see Philips in a staged opera soon, I remember that Gunn is totally fun, and I wish we had been able to drink the wine ahead of time. But all in all a nice night out.

Similar programs will be happening in other boroughs in the next few weeks, check out the program here.

Video: Susanna Phillips sings “Non mi dir” (why couldn’t she have given this intro last night?)

Review

Le Grand Macabre: Apocalypse whenever

May 28, 2010 6 Comments

Ligeti, Le Grand Macabre (1996 revised version). New York Philharmonic, 5/27/10. Conducted by Alan Gilbert; directed and designed by Doug Fitch with Eric Owens (Nekrotzar) Mark Schowalter (Piet the Pot), Barbara Hannigan (Gepopo), and many others.

Absurdism doesn’t take well to half-assing. If it isn’t totally over-the-top, it’s just dumb. Which is to say that I’m not sure if presenting Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre semi-staged is a very good idea.

Nekrotzar with, uh, you know. There’s the screen, anyways.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad this piece could finally get its badly overdue New York premiere. But the logistical limitations of this production, designed and directed by Doug Fitch, frequently reminded me of the piece’s weaknesses rather than the reasons why it’s one of the most popular operas composed in the last 50 years.

This is a considerable musical achievement for the Philharmonic: the orchestra sounded fantastic, the singing was on a high level. But I’m not so sure about the staging, or really the opera itself.

Avery Fisher Hall has been pushed to its technical limits, with a stage extending far out into the hall, placing the action in front of the orchestra. There are elaborate costumes but there is no set; atmosphere is added not only by the credited “Atmosphericist” (AKA flashy set-mover [such that there is] and Bono lookalike) but by video on a large oval screen above the stage. The video is a live projection of the actions of a team of puppeteers who are camped out in full view stage left, pointing a camera at a wide variety of miniature landscapes, comic book-style speech bubbles, and so on.

The plot, taking place in the grotesque Bruegelland (which according to the video resembles Tantooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet) is a ridiculous episodic story of Nekrotzar, who may or may not be Death. Apparently it’s time for the Apocalypse, which means he has to go around letting people know about this or something. These people include the court astronomer, Astradamors, tortured by his whip-wielding wife Mescalina, and Prince Go-Go and his two ministers and Gepopo, the head of his Secret Service. Nekrotzar is accompanied by a drunken sidekick, Piet, and occasionally interrupted by a euphoric couple singing duets about how much they love each other. Finally, midnight comes, and apparently it was all a mistake because everyone is pretty sure they’re still alive. Or are they? Whatever.

“Whatever” is kind of my attitude towards this piece, honestly. Ligeti’s music is jaggedly brilliant, exciting, and occasionally exceptionally beautiful (particularly the music for the lovers, gorgeously sung by Jennifer Black and Renée Tatum in grass skirts and sequins, they could benefit from a staging that actually reflects the slinkiness of their music). The orchestration is absurdly excessive and wonderful, including giant drum beats, many trombones, confusingly repetitive motifs, and anything else fun you can do with apocalyptic sounds.

Astradamors and Mescalina

But, despite all the action, things seem to drag, particularly in the first half. The piece’s politics remain firmly stuck in the 1970s, and Macabre‘s absurdist, anti-bourgeois operatic stance was presumably more timely then. Now it feels a bit old hat. The characters are caricatures, but the production did not do justice to their ridiculousness. The Mescalina stuff was blessedly underplayed (call me a humorless feminist but I find the character offensive), but the result was it was just annoying and slow. Humanizing anyone is not on Ligeti’s agenda, and the (lack of) set combined with the lack of definition of the characters only called attention to the lack of dramatic development without putting enough dramatic color or contrast in its place.

Come on, naming a character Gepopo is just asking for Gaga-ness.

The second half was much better. Things don’t really get any more action-oriented, but the action becomes even less sequential. The production seemed inspired to greater heights of lunacy, which was exactly what it needed. Prince Go-Go is stuck in a giant foam globe. Why? Is it his kingdom? No idea, but that’s kind of the wrong question to ask. It was funny, and Anthony Roth Costanzo (last seen in Partenope) sang with impressive power and great comic timing. The Black and White Ministers (Peter Tantsits and Joshua Bloom) pulled off a lot of joint comedy, and as Gepopo we witnessed Lady Gaga’s long-anticipated operatic debut. Meaning, Barbara Hannigan was truly amazing in the part, singing the Lulu-like music with a performance that was 25% Olympia and 75% the “Paparazzi” video, robotics and hair included. Unlike the first half, it was delightful enough to never ask why and just go with it.

Unfortunately when we returned to Astradamors and Piet and co., things slowed down again, though Nekrotzar’s entrance through the hall with the accompaniment of a twisted klezmer band was one of the most memorable musical moments of the evening. Eric Owens was an imposing Nekrotzar somewhat lacking in dark humor, Michael Schowalter an energetic Piet who sang the demanding music very well, though his pleasant lyric voice lacks a certain ugly cutting Mime quality this part seems to require, with all its drunken yelling.

There is so much going on here that it was sometimes hard to appreciate the fabulous playing of the New York Philharmonic and conducting of Alan Gilbert (one of, at some points, THREE conductors–joined by one in front of the singers and sometimes another for the chorus in the second tier boxes). But it sounded fantastic, much more delicate than the Salonen recording though not lacking in volume in the loud passages, and very well balanced through the most complicated sections.

Piet the Pot

The videos were fun, but sitting extreme house right orchestra the puppeteers were right in front of me, and it was hard (especially for a stage techie like me) to not watch their carefully-choreographed swapping of miniature sets rather than what was happening center stage or even on the actual screen. It gave everything a nice handmade quality, but perhaps they could be in the back on a raised platform or somewhere where it would be less distracting? However, I’m guessing there were already enough logistical challenges in this performance to worry about something like this.

The score has some fantastic moments: the preludes and interludes for car horns and door bells (are we thinking of anvils by any chance?), Gepopo’s stratospheric coloratura, Nekrotzar’s various apocalyptic proclamations, moments of eighteenth-century pastiche, the final passacaglia. But it’s an opera that, completely intentionally, is lacking in a soul. When you tire of its assertions that it is the most amusingly cheeky thing to ever happen, it is insufferably smug. And when it is presented in an elaborate but nonetheless limited production like this one, it is hard to stay with it the whole time.

Edited to add: Anne Midgette makes a great point in her review:

The problem with this kind of Contemporary Cultural Event is that it still tends to be depicted in black and white: either you’re a Philistine who doesn’t like atonality and takes umbrage at graffiti of male genitalia on the Avery Fisher stage, or you are an insider who embraces the whole thing as a consummate masterpiece.

I admit to feeling strangely guilty for not flipping out for this one, because it’s the kind of thing that forward-thinking people like me are supposed to adore. But, I’m sorry, I would be lying if I said I was overwhelmed. I enjoyed it. I’m glad the Phil put it on. I’m sorry if I am a renegade member of the New Music Cult (I’m experienced enough with new music to know what’s going on here, but it’s hardly my specialty). This is what I thought about it, take it or leave it.

Next: T-minus less than two weeks on the LA Ring.

Photos: Chris Lee

Review

Lulu: First farce, then tragedy

May 13, 2010 No Comments

Berg, Lulu (three act version). Metropolitan Opera, 5/12/10. Conducted by Fabio Luisi with Marlis Petersen (Lulu), James Morris (Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper), Anne Sofie von Otter (Gräfin Geschwitz), Gary Lehman (Alwa), Michael Schade (Painter/African Prince), Gwynne Howell (Schigolch), Bradley Garvin (Athlete/Animal Trainer). Production by John Dexter.

I think it is reasonable to say that most audience members, directors, and conductors would identify Lulu as an unremittingly bleak and surreal blast of sex and violence. What we got at the Met last night was considerably more complex than that, and fascinatingly so.

Marlis Petersen is completely at ease in Berg’s musical world. She not only sings all of Lulu’s ridiculously demanding music without apparent effort but moves with an amazing sensitivity to the musical gesture, and not just the gestures she is singing. I would like to think that this is the kind of performance Berg was looking for when he wrote so many picky stage directions in his score. Petersen’s Lulu feels almost like a choreographic realization of the music.

Like her cousin Salome, Lulu is usually interpreted today as a passive creation of male desire rather than as an aggressor. Taking Lulu as a helpless victim of men, as Petersen does, makes us feel a little better about the gender politics of this piece, though I doubt Berg, much less his buddies Kraus and Weininger, would recognize this take on feminine nature. This approach makes her increased awareness in the second half something of a self-actualization, which again feels better to us now. (I think Petersen’s approach is entirely the right one for today, and I would probably be very uncomfortable with anything else, but I think we need to acknowledge that this piece has a shitload of gender trouble.)

Fabio Luisi’s conducting continues to be wonderful, finding brilliantly clear textures without ever losing forward motion. Tempos were on the fast side. This, combined with more lightness than usual, brought out a surprising amount of black comedy in the score. There are parts of Lulu that have a great deal of dark humor, but they are usually awkward. I’m never sure if I should laugh when Lulu somewhat offhandedly mentions to Alwa that she was the one who poisoned his mother. But they felt right here, and successfully tied together surreal and farcical elements of the opera together–the ritualistically echoing lines, the allusions to number opera–with the more expected lustful and violent ones.

This happened dramatically as well. John Dexter’s production is dully realistic and somewhat worn around the edges–the Met photographer avoided taking many photos that show much of the sets, perhaps understandably. The sets occupy only a small triangle of space center stage. It all feels hopelessly tame and frumpy for the goings-on, and sucked some blood from the piece, so to speak, that a more brilliant backdrop might have focused more. A certain amount of depraved zing was lost, but it had an interesting effect. The stodgy setting, and the ease and fluidity of Petersen’s Lulu contrasted with the stiff and much more static performances of her men (intentional or accident of casting? I don’t know), all of which pushed us towards a Schnitzler-like satire of bourgeois life. Sometimes in the schtickier moments it even suggested a middlebrow farce or comedy of manners that happened to involve a lot of violence (“the servant who is intentionally clattering those dishes is having an affair with my wife too? damnation!”). I think the production intended to be entirely straight, but something about such a resolutely concrete and staid staging of such a louche, surreal piece of work is radical in itself. To my convoluted mind, at least.

But at the turning point of the opera–that is to say, the Film Music linking the two scenes of Act II–things got a lot darker. (No film this time, which I missed but am not going to throw a fit over.) In the plot, this is where Lulu is in prison and then in the hospital, which she identifies as “when she came to know herself,” the semi-self-actualization I mentioned above. Dexter’s set for Act 3 Scene 1 is considerably less realistic than the ones before it (limited color palette, bigger contrasts). Everything begins to replay itself in Berg’s recapitulatory and palindromic fashion, only this time despite the ever-increasing ridiculousness of the plot it is in deadly earnest (a few jokes at the expense of some bankers aside). I wish the final London scene had been a bit grittier and grimier–Jack the Ripper, as you can see above, looks halfway respectable–but it was certainly creepy enough. Lulu seems aware that she can do little to control her fate.

As for the rest of the singing, it was good! James Morris redeemed some of his wobbles earlier in the season with an excellently sung though occasionally dramatically blank Dr. Schön–I can understand that Dr. Schön is a bit on the repressed side, though. Gary Lehman sang Alwa with heroic strength, particularly his impassioned and tireless rendition of the Act 2 Scene 2 duet, a highlight of the score. Bradley Gauvin was a maniacally animated Athlete and Animal Trainer, the latter more sung than Sprechstimme’d. The other supporting parts, particularly Gwynne Howell’s gentle Schigolch and Graham Clark’s scary character tenors, were all excellent.

The Countess Geschwitz is the most human character in the opera, to my mind, and Anne Sofie von Otter was touching. This was my first time hearing her live despite having a few of her CDs and considering myself a big fan. Her voice is in excellent condition, and she made this sometimes pathetic character gently sympathetic, and her end truly tragic.

I’m glad that I could end my Met season with such an amazing performance. Three cheers for all involved, but particularly Maestro Luisi. (Then, for Berg, those three cheers again in retrograde!)

Lest you think this is the nadir of sex and violence in opera, I will be reporting on the New York Philharmonic’s production of Le grand macabre in exactly two weeks. Perhaps some end-of-season fun before then.

Edited to add p.s. to people led here from Google Finance: I’m guessing that you’ve decided by now that I have nothing to say about the stock LULU. You are wrong, I do have an opinion. I think those yoga pants are really overpriced.

Video: There was a video here, but it apparently poses copyright issues. Removed at the request of the Chicago Lyric Opera, sigh. Don’t want to get anyone in trouble.

Review

Armida: I loved a sorceress and all I got were these lousy poppies

April 13, 2010 2 Comments

Rossini, Armida. Metropolitan Opera, 4/12/2010. New production premiere directed by Mary Zimmerman, conducted by Riccardo Frizza with Renée Fleming (Armida), Lawrence Brownlee (Rinaldo), John Osborn (Goffredo), assorted other tenors.

Sadly, in Mary Zimmerman’s new production of Rossini’s 1817 opera Armida, we have another clunker. I know this was widely seen coming, but this production is weak sauce in so many ways. And now for Part Two of “It’s Raining Tenors!” (See here for Part One, on Partenope.)

I should have known it was going to be trouble from the picture of Renée Fleming wearing a hot pink dress and waving a wand on the Met website. Enchanting! Astonishing! Magic! was promised. But Armida is a Saracen sorceress who seduces and abducts upstanding and heroic Christian crusaders. She’s Carmen in the Holy Land with magic, or Thaïs without the reform (the latter Renée should understand). Renée Fleming in this production is a grown-up Disney princess whom her chief conquest Rinaldo would never fear to bring home to his mother. In a nutshell, the production is fatally unsexy.

The trope of knights seduced by heathen women is more fully explored and clearly stated in Monty Python than it is here. The knights are a random assemblage of dudes in uniform, their internal power struggles given no gravity or significance at all, Armida’s lair is populated by generically exotic women who seem nice enough. Armida’s demons, to whom Rossini gives some quite creepy music, are just embarrassingly silly with their tails and devil ears and slinky choreography. My companion pegged their look as straight out of Cats. Armida is not supposed to be scary and evil because she has poor taste in mega-musicals.

Armida’s magic isn’t just literal magic, it’s a stand-in for a threatening Other of female sexuality threatening good Christian soldiers. But this production completely ignores this in favor of sparkles. The production has its pretty moments but is completely without bite. Rossini’s final scene, as Rinaldo escapes Armida’s grasp, has some intense music, but it just feels tacked-on here due to the low emotional stakes. The superfluous allegorical figures of Love and Vengeance wandering around don’t help give things any gravity, either.

You can’t accuse Zimmerman of not listening to the music. Every change of tempo and meter is marked with a clear stage action or lighting cue. The effect is redundant and lifeless, because even though the music moves in blocks the dramatic flow should transcend the sectional construction. Just because the story is told in numbers doesn’t mean the numbers themselves are the story. The stage action references the music too directly and too frequently to assume any kind of life of its own.

Every single time we have an inner monologue or ensemble in which the participants are not supposed to hear each other, the lights dim to spots telling us what is up, you know, they can’t hear each other! It insults the intelligence of the audience as well as being boring. The arias suffer the from some horribly static stagings (with decisive walking in the orchestral transitions). I know this is complicated music to sing and we are dealing with lots of tenors here, but it’s dramatically just flat. Zimmerman manages to find much more emotion and narrative in the duets, but the directing of the chorus is mostly aimless milling about on the production’s dull unit set.

Armida, with its many magical transformation scenes, seems a poor candidate for such a unit set, and we never have much of a sense of place. (I think projections would have worked better.) Here we have another curving wall, this time off-white rather than beige, it’s pretty enough but doesn’t add any effective atmosphere. There is “stage magic,” meaning birds and stuff, pretty but forgettable and without dramatic purpose. The giant spiders I was excited about, by the way? Very disappointing. There are lots of poppies in the last act, though soporifics are the last thing the audiences needs at this point. (Seriously, guys, cuts. Look into them.)

The ballet in Act 2 was somewhat entertaining, Graciela Daniele’s choreography a questionable mix of semi-ballet and cutesy hip-shaking. The point, a central male dancer corrupted by many lady dancers, was clear enough, but the dance’s dramatic status was unclear, it was not positioned as a fantasy sequence but rather as a diegetic entertainment for Armida and Rinaldo, but it was unclear who was staging this for them or what it was supposed to mean.

Perhaps I would have been more dramatically convinced had the musical performance been more compelling. Renée Fleming sketched most of the coloratura, skating over the little notes instead of articulating them clearly, and she just doesn’t have the kind of fearless abandon in this kind of music that makes it virtuosic rather than dutiful. She didn’t have volume problems except on some of the low notes, and the voice itself is gorgeous. I didn’t notice too many of the lapses in taste for which she is so infamous, but she simply is miscast here. (Based on her amazing Colbran CD, I would loved to have heard Joyce DiDonato in this role.)

Now for our many tenors. Lawrence Brownlee was fantastic in Rinaldo’s more lyrical music, and he tossed off the coloratura with impressive ease and precision. I like his sweet and round tone, which projects just fine, but didn’t find it quite right for this role, where I think a certain degree more heft and heroism is required. Too soon for him? Perhaps John Osborn, who sang Goffredo, would be better suited to Rinaldo, though his tone is less beautiful it has a ringing strength that seems appropriate. He was excellent in the smaller role of Goffredo, though. Joining Brownlee in the infamous tenor trio were Barry Banks and Kobie van Rensburg as two more knights, both sang well but the piece didn’t quite add up somehow.

Riccardo Frizza conducted a very clean and precise reading from the orchestra that was maybe a bit short on dramatic weight and mystery–or maybe that’s just the production. The instrumental solos, particularly the cello and violin, were excellent.

I know that my impressions of this production are heavily colored by a different Armida that I saw last summer, or rather an Armide. (The plot, an episode from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, has been set not only by Rossini but also Lully, Handel, Haydn, Gluck, Salieri, Dvorak, and others.) This was Gluck’s opera of 1787, it was at the Komische Oper Berlin in a production by Calixto Bieito (NSFW clip and interviews here repeat not really that safe for work). I honestly find Gluck’s opera much more interesting than Rossini’s, and Bieito’s production, which positioned a determined, modern Armida in a business suit against an army of naked male prisoners, um, made an impression. It had all the danger and violence that this one lacked, perhaps all too much danger and violence, but Armida’s powers were clearly drawn.

(I thought, since I know the Gluck I would be fine not reading about Rossini before I went. FYI don’t do this, the plots are not the same AT ALL.)

We’re getting a revival of this Rossini next season, good lord. Can I petition to either bring Bieito’s Gluck Armide over from Berlin (come on, it would get the Met in the news for sure! I CANNOT picture Renée Fleming going anywhere near a Bieito production but vocally the Gluck would probably suit her voice much better than the Rossini) or maybe get William Christie to bring Les Arts Florissants to do the Lully Armide instead? I acknowledge the complete infeasibility and impossibility of this but I just want to say that you can do much better with Armida than this current specimen.

Next: Tosca, sei tu!

Photos: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Video: NOT ROSSINI. Lully’s Armide (1686), Les Arts Florissants

Review

Partenope: It’s raining (counter)tenors, part one

April 4, 2010 2 Comments

Handel, Partenope. New York City Opera, 4/3/2010. Conducted by Christian Curnyn with Cyndia Sieden (Partenope), Iestyn Davies (Arsace), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Armindo), Stephanie Houtzeel (Rosmira), Nicholas Coppolo (Emilio). Production by Francisco Negrin, directed by Andrew Chown.

Now that we have finished our Shakespeare unit we are starting the reverse-Blumenmädchen part, that is some ladies who have entranced–either by their natural charms or their magical charms–a large number of hapless high-voiced men. Most of these ladies are named Armida, and we will soon encounter the Met’s example of this, but today we will be discussing the all-natural, no magic required Partenope, in Handel’s opera of the same title.*

This is a somewhat obscure opera, though this isn’t its first time at City Opera, and this production is a revival. NPR World of Opera has a nice plot summary and introduction here. Partenope is a comedy, more or less, which means that the constant comedy applied by directors to most Handel opera actually is appropriate this time. Francisco Negrin’s production, revived by Andrew Chown, however, doesn’t push the outrageous button very many times, and manages to impart a good deal of humanity to the characters.

The orchestra was modern, and since I mostly listen to Handel as performed by period orchestras, this was a bit different (not in a good way in my opinion, I love my HIP). The result is fleet rather than springy, and in the first act I felt like conductor Christian Curnyn’s tempos were far too fast to allow the music to breathe or have any shape. But either he calmed down or I got used to it because the second two acts seemed much better.

Francisco Negrin’s setting is modern abstract, and like L’Étoile, the characters kind of color-coded. The single set is a set of moving white and turquoise walls that resemble a less run-down version of wherever the Met’s Hamlet was set, and appear to be built for a smaller stage than the one on which they currently reside. However in Personenregie it is mostly naturalistic, no choreography for the arias, the fanciful elements are limited to the costumes and occasional ambiguously symbolic objects appearing onstage.

Sometimes Negrin (Chown?) stages a da capo aria as a single continuous narrative, sometimes the da capo (the A’ of the ABA’ structure) as a variation of the first A, echoing the musical structure. Particularly considering the realistic staging of most of the other action, I thought the first strategy considerably more effective. The lighting design also acknowledges the structure of the music, mostly very effectively–a shame there was so much ugly pink light.

Most of the singers had no trouble with the quick tempos. Cyndia Sieden as Partenope zips through everything at warp speed with her laser-bright soprano, and also float nicely on the slow stuff. She may lack a certain degree of charisma or glamor or something, she seemed a bit too nice, but was always a pleasure to hear.

As Rosmira, a woman disguised as a man who sings in the same range of the countertenors (oh, Handel, you trickster!), Stephanie Houtzeel was very good, with a rich and warm sound and excellent high notes, and was fun onstage. Her coloratura is excellent but her low notes didn’t seem that big, I see in her bio she’s headed to Strauss repertoire, where she’ll probably sound great.

The two countertenors were both excellent and a study in contrasts, which is good when you have two major characters in the same fach. Iestyn Davies has a clear, bell-like sound with a lot of pure beauty, but also of considerable virtuosity, particularly in the ridiculous “Furibondo spira il vento” (see video below). Anthony Roth Costanzo as Armindo is more nasal and heavier on the vibrato (also sounded best on his high notes, I wonder if this role is low for him?). Nicholas Coppolo as lesser suitor Emilio (tenors not enjoying the starry status of castrati in Handel’s day) sang just as much coloratura with a pleasant Mozart-tenor ish sound.

The production ended up being a nice break from the madcap and the wacky, there was none of the sensory overload that some Handel stagings can produce, the plot was easy to follow, it was funny when it should be funny, and we got to concentrate on the virtuosity of the singing. Could it have been a little sexier? Yeah, probably, but sometimes moderation is a good thing.

City Opera has declined to provide any photos of the current cast, so I attempt to evoke the glory of Handel’s London period below:

Next: I may drag myself to the Armida prima if I can find companionship, because I hear there are going to be GIANT SPIDERS and as someone who has read and watched Lord of the Rings an unseemly number of times I do love a giant spider. Can’t wait for Tosca because OMG Patricia Racette and Fabio Luisi! This ticket’s value seems to be increasing rather than decreasing with the substitutions. Just don’t mess with my tenor and we’re good.

*Yes, this is one of the many things in opera that pisses off a feminist. These lady-learns-a-lesson operas always grate. Lady is always so much more boring after she is reformed and married off. But I can usually ignore it and deal. (My gender politics are always up for a good Fidelio, though. ALWAYS.)

“Furibondo spira il vento,” Philippe Jaroussky (sorry, Iestyn, you aren’t on the YouTube!)

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