Camilla Nylund and Robert Dean Smith are Elsa and Lohengrin in a concert performance of the opening scene of Act III of LOHENGRIN given by the Royal Concertgebouw in 2010. Iván Fischer conducts.
Watch and listen here.
Author: Philip Gardner
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The Met’s Newest Aida (+ A Cast Change!)
~ Author: Oberon
Saturday March 22nd, 2025 matinee – In 1883, a Swedish soprano named Christina Nilsson sang Marguerite in FAUST for the opening of the then-new Metropolitan Opera House. Last week, another Swedish soprano named Christina Nilsson (photo above) made her Met debut as Aida. This afternoon, I went to hear my second AIDA of the current season to see how she fared in the daunting role.
Another singer new to me, tenor Alejandro Roy (above), stepped in today as Radames; he had made a short-notice Met debut in TURANDOT in 2019 opposite Christine Goerke…
…and the Amonasro, Roman Burdenko (above), had just made his Met debut a few days ago.
Alexander Soddy was on the podium, and while he has good ideas about tempi and the alternating currents of grandeur and intimacy that run thru the score, he (like so many opera conductors today) tends to let the orchestra get the better of the singers all too frequently. Despite this, the score seemed extremely beautiful today, and I often felt moved.
The Messenger and the Priestess – Yongzhao Yu and Ann-Kathrin Niemczyk – made the most of their moments. The two bassos were both super: Alexander Vinogradov (Ramfis) and Krzysztof Bączyk (the King) have powerful voices and they sounded assured throughout their range. So many phrases from these two gentlemen impressed me today. In the ensemble in the opening scene – and again in the Triumphal Scene – where both bassos have great moments, they created a sonic energy that was so pleasing to experience.
Mr. Burdenko likewise made a vivid impression, his opening “Suo padre!” immediately established his dignity and fierce pride. Capable of both power and subtlety, Mr. Burdenko made every phrase come to life; a feeling of steadfastness emerged in his plea “Ma tu, Re…“. In the Nile Scene duet with Ms. Nilsson, the baritone veered from venomous (“…tu sei la schiava!“) to tenderness (“…pensa che un popolo…vinto…straziata…”) Bravo!!
Mr. Roy’s voice exudes masculine confidence; it’s tinged with baritonal shadings at times but he also had the top notes for the music when needed. Following with my score, he seemed to heed all the dynamic markings, though he took the end of the “Celeste Aida” full voice. Joining in the trio with Ms. Nilsson and Judit Kutasi (Amneris), the three were sometimes covered by the orchestra. Again, in the Temple Scene, the sturdy voices of Mssrs. Roy and Vinogradov had to combat the orchestra’s volume..
Having only one intermission, after the Triumphal Scene (wherein Mr. Roy blasted an epic B-flat at one point), the tenor must sing in succession the demanding Nile Scene and the dramatic confrontation with Amneris, and then bring forth lyricism for the tender final duet, “O terra addio…”). He handled this marathon quite impressively. I thought he might run out of steam near the end, but the final “…si schiude il ciel…” with Ms. Nilsson was handsomely clear and sustained.
Ms. Kutasi, whose Amneris was disappointing at my earlier performance this season, fared little better today, though her B-flats in the repeated phrase “…dal ciel si compira...” in the Judgement Scene were her best notes of the day. I really don’t know what is going on with her; there are exciting clips of her on YouTube, but the voice now is very erratic. The audience cheered her enthusiastically.
I grew up on such plushy spinto Aidas as Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Leona Mitchell, Gilda Cruz-Romo, and Anna Tomowa-Sintow. Ms. Nilsson today curiously put me in mind of Lucine Amara, an under-appreciated ‘big lyric’ soprano who could float lovely piani on high; Ms. Nilsson’s style is not as Italianate as Lucine’s, but their vocal heft is similar.
A ravishing clarinet solo introduces Aida, and the Nilsson voice has immediate appeal; she sounds young – even girlish at times. In the cantabile passages of the trio and ensemble of the opening scene, her singing is very persuasive; but Mr. Soddy lets that ensemble get too brassy…and there was an added drum rhythm I’d never noticed before.
Ms. Nilsson got to show her stuff with “Ritorna vincitor“, her singing reflective, her phrasing having a lyrical glow; she gave the aria a lovely, poignant finish. In the boudoir scene, the soprano’s tone sometimes lacked richness, but she fared well in the Triumphal Scene, with a gleaming top-C to cap the ensemble’s first half.
On the banks of the Nile, Ms. Nilsson shaped “O patria mia…” perfectly, though more colours could have been introduced along the way. Her sweet high-C lingered long on the air, and her sustained phrases at the aria’s finish were gorgeous. Mr. Burdenko’s raging “…tu sei la Schiava!” elicited a blistering top-A from the soprano. She later got enticingly floaty and provocative with “…la, tra le foreste vergini...” in the duet with Radames, before spinning out a magical “…fuggiam…fuggiam.....” The stretta, with Mr. Roy, was excitingly sung.
The tenor commenced the final scene expressively, and Ms. Nilsson’s lyricism glows, lit by beaming high notes along the way; here she really reminded me of Amara. Mr. Roy sang valiantly as the opera moved towards its solemn ending, his voice well-matched to Ms. NIlsson’s. They took a joint bow, to a warm salute from the crowd. Mr. Roy had saved the day, and Ms. Nilsson had won new admirers.
Notably, it was the all-male ballet in the Triumphal Scene that roused the audience to the afternoon’s most enthusiastic cheers.
~ Oberon
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SOLOperas at The Tank
~ Author: Shoshana Klein
Thursday March 20th, 2025 – This evening, I went to The Tank in Midtown (close to my office!) for a showing of solo operas in a small black box theater. Two operas were performed, both in impressive solo performances with varied skills and stories compellingly set forth forth. Other than that, they were very different experiences!
This is not about Natalie ~ Jason Cady
The first opera followed an unsuccessful musician feeling bad about her ex-music partner who became successful and moved on from their band. The story was told by way of daily vlogs that included conversations with a puppet – performer Sarah Daniels (photo above by Reuben Radding) did a great job, singing varied types of music, sometimes accompanying herself on electric guitar, and interacting with the ventriloquist puppet (whose voice had been pre-recorded, along with some accompaniment music, which was mostly kind of synth-pop). I thought it was interesting and pretty fun that the texture of the music – including songs performed as if they were kind of indie pop or rock – were being sung operatically, which somehow on the whole worked pretty well. The piece was clever, though transparent, and well executed.
INcomplete Cosmicomics ~ Anna Heflin
After intermission, we settled in for a piece twice the length of the first. This piece was different in most ways. Based off of/inspired by/in conversation with Calvino’s Cosmicomics (Which I came in knowing almost nothing about), the character Qwfwq spends the hour in verbal and musical conversation with the audience. There was no operatic style singing – just one performer with a cello, voice, and looper with some effects. The music often made use of the looper, with stories being told intermittently – stories that often felt like folk tales, but sometimes involved ruminations, and other times explanations. Qwfwq was in conversation with his author, and those who have written about him – Ursula K Le Guin, and some others I didn’t know – he responds in a very human way to the criticisms given to him.
Qwfwq spoke to us as the audience, directly, wearing an altered blue jumpsuit (photo above by with patches and doodles sewn on, and wool socks. The character often had a kind of self-deprecating self awareness that was very engaging, as well as feeling friendly and approachable, though presented as fragments, or a set of thoughts.
The music used a lot of looping – including with singing and speaking voice, as well as the cello, sometimes in complicated counterpoint. The piece went through many creative sound worlds that I liked – including making use of a tray of beads with contact microphone, and lots of breathing sounds that molded from the voice to the cello almost seamlessly.
I should have known this piece would have been great, since Anna wrote a somewhat similar solo piece for a friend of mine based on Alice and Wonderland – using voice and various effects to create something impressively textured and evocative. Prepared or not, I thoroughly enjoyed the performance, and Aaron Wolff (photo above by Reuben Radding) was an impressive interpreter – as an actor, cellist, and communicator.~ Shoshana Klein
(Performance photos by Reuben Radding)
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NYFOS: Beginner’s Luck
Above: Stephen Blier surrounded by Kate Morton, Zoë Zhou, Reed Gnepper, Bénédicte Jourdois, Jamal Al-Titi, and Chea Kang; photo by Cherylynn Tsushima.
Author: Lili Tobias
Thursday March 20th, 2025 – Beginner’s Luck—The Artist’s Journey at the Kaufman Music Center on was an impressive collaborative effort between four singers and three pianists; the concert was part of the New York Festival of Song, co-founded by Steven Blier who also served as artistic director, mentor to Caramoor’s 2025 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars, and one of the pianists in concert. The aforementioned Rising Stars were soprano Chea Kang, mezzo-soprano Kate Morton, tenor Reed Gnepper, baritone Jamal Al-Titi, and pianist Zoë Zhou. They were also joined by associate artistic director and pianist Bénédicte Jourdois.
All the artists worked together to craft a well-rounded program of songs, from classical to musical theater to other styles of popular song, and it was heart-warming to hear them speak about the music before performing it—clearly a lot of care had gone into choosing and preparing the songs!
The four singers all had an extensive background in classical singing and opera, so it was interesting to see how they approached the non-classical styles of song on the program. I thought that mezzo-soprano Kate Morton and tenor Reed Gnepper’s voices felt the most at home in a more musical theater-y style, but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the other two singers’ performances of that genre. Hearing the wide variety of songs sung in four completely distinct styles revealed that perhaps the variety is not actually quite as wide. There are truly so many similarities—in the capacity for storytelling, in the emotional impact—between classical art songs, musical theater songs, and other styles of song, and depending on the singer, many performances lie within a gray area between genres.
Photo: Cherylynn Tsushima
I love going to concerts and recitals that feature multiple singers because it’s a joy to experience each of their personal approaches to the music, both in terms of vocal quality and technique and stage presence as well. I mentioned previously that I thought Morton and Gnepper’s voices were well suited to musical theater, and a lot of that was due to the warmth and brightness of their singing, which filled the room with beautiful sound (and this was true for the more classical style songs as well). In contrast, I felt that soprano Chae Kang and baritone Jamal Al-Titi both sang with a more pointed intonation, hitting each note with perfect precision and articulating every single consonant and vowel. Kang’s incredible vocal control was on full display when she performed Edvard Grieg’s Die verschwiegene Nachtigall. It’s a classical music cliche for sopranos to sing music about birds, but I can see the reasoning behind it! Kang meticulously produced every single warble and trill as if she was a real nightingale.
Al-Titi (above, photo by Cherylynn Tsashima) displayed incredible vocal control as well in his performance of Mikhail Glinka’s The Traveler’s Song, the musical style of which is akin to “patter songs” most commonly found in opera buffa or other comic operas. Managing the unrelenting rush of notes and syllables was impressive enough, but I was absolutely blown away by Al-Titi’s stage presence during this song, as well as the other ones he performed. He had me and the entire audience smiling and laughing with just a raise of his eyebrow or a movement of his hand. I was also impressed with the chemistry between all the singers when they performed duets.
While performing Jeffery Stock’s We Two Boys and Robert Beaser’s I’m so much more me, Gnepper and Al-Titi (above, photo by Cherylynn Tsushima) casually leaned against a piano, showed off some dance moves, nailed a beautiful a cappella section, and held hands for the final bow.
Above: pianists Zoë Zhou and Bénédicte Jourdois; photo by Cherylynn Tsushima. The coordination between the three pianists (on two pianos, no less) deserves recognition as well! They accompanied the singers in various combinations, from the standard one pianist/one piano to piano four-hands to two piano arrangements. As a pianist who mainly accompanies singers myself, I know just how useful it is for these young singers to be able to work with multiple different pianists (as well as for the pianists to work with many singers). Every musician has their own way of interacting with the other musicians they collaborate with, so it must have been a wonderful learning and growing experience for everyone involved.
The encore to the concert was, naturally, George and Ira Gershwin’s (I’ve Got) Beginner’s Luck! Overall, this concert felt like a complete theatrical production, with a plot arc of growing up. While these musicians had only been working all together for the past week, I would have believed it if I was told they had been making music together for years. It was evident from everyone performing in Beginner’s Luck that music has the incredible ability to form deep bonds between people that will likely last a lifetime.
Performance photos by Cherylynn Tsushima
~ Lili Tobias
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LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO ~ 25th ANNIVERSARY
A gala concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Lyric Opera of Chicago was given on October 14th, 1979.
The participating conductors were George Prêtre, Nicola Rescigno, Riccardo Chailly, Bruno Bartoletti, Sir John Pritchard, and Krzysztof Penderecki, and the line-up of singers was impressive indeed.
Listen here.
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From the beginning…
This was the first-ever post on my original blog, Oberon’s Grove:
On this spring-like morning, I’ve been for a walk in Inwood Park. We are living now at the very northern tip of the isle of Manatus, and in the park a boulder marks the place where the Dutch are reputed to have purchased the island from the native inhabitants. When I am there, I try to imagine what it was like then. In a way, I wish it had remained untouched and un-christianized but then of course I would not be here. I’d be blogging from England or Holland or wherever it was my forefathers came from.
April 13, 2006
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Miranda van Kralingen
The Dutch soprano Miranda van Kralingen competed at the 1991 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Her performance of ‘Beim Schlafengehn’ from Strauss’s Four Last Songs stood out among much fine singing at that prestigious event, and I’ve preserved my tape of it over the years, despite a radio dropout during the orchestral interlude.
Click below to listen:
Miranda van Kralingen – Beim Schlafengehn ~ R Strauss – Cardiff 1991
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Mother and Child Reunion
(A re-post from Oberon’s Grove, dating from 2007)
My friend Mollie, who lives in Fareham, England, sent me this story about meeting her mother after 71 years! Mollie and I have known each other for over 3 decades, since the time I answered her small ad in the British magazine OPERA. She was looking for tapes of Frederica von Stade and I happened to have a real rarity: a recital Flicka gave in Syracuse, NY on her first tour as a professional singer.
Mollie came to the USA several times over the years and once she had the good fortune to have Flicka invite her to a working rehearsal of IDOMENEO at the Met. Mollie and Flicka have stayed in touch to this day.
Each summer Mollie sends me the tapes of the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition and so it was that I was one of the first people on these shores to hear the voices of Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Bryn Terfel within a week of the famous ‘battle of the baritones’ in 1989.
The last time Mollie was here, she met my late friend the Japanese contralto Makiko Narumi who was at that time on the brink of the big career that never happened.
I knew that Mollie had not been raised by her real parents but I had no idea of the story behind it, or that she had located her mother who is now 93 years old. I’ll let Mollie tell the story; Jeremy is Mollie’s son and Syd is Jeremy’s daughter.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
“HI dears…just to send on this fantastic photo of me and MY REAL MOTHER!!! After 71 years!!! A sad story and we did not stay long. Jeremy was great and knocked on the door and when she answered he said she was not to be upset at what he had to say, but that he was her grandson. She went to say ‘go away’ [nicely] but he said, “Before you say anything I have to say we just would like to put a face to a name and have waited a long time to do so but we will go away after that”. She was explaining that she lives alone and was RAPED by my drunken Irish father..that accounted for her never wanting to know about me.
I then got out of the car and went over and said it was so kind of her to see us and we would not stay but may we just have a photo? She said that since 1920 she had lived here in the family home. She had a little smile and twinkle in her eye and said, “He is very handsome isn’t he?”…meaning Jeremy, who was charm himself…glad he took me!!!
Anyway, she made us promise not to come again and said it is too much for her…at 93!! Very sprightly!!! She said she had driven until she was 80 but has severe athritis in her hands and knees. When we were leaving she called me back and gave me two photos of herself…and she gladly took the latest school photo of Syd which Jeremy happened to have in the car…so…we were all exhausted but exhilarated…especially as although it took 2.4 hrs to get to Ash it took another hour or more along single lanes to find the house..and only then because a lady drew us a map!!!!!
Home exhausted…Jeremy had driven for 7 hours…so was kindness itself..he was as excited at me at finding his grandmother as he has none and hasn’t since he was 4!! That’s all folks but just wanted to share my good news…”
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Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra Make a Statement @ Carnegie Hall
Above: Maestro Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra onstage at Carnegie Hall; photo by Fadi Kheir
~ Author: Lane Raffaldini Rubin
Tuesday March 18th, 2025 – Tuesday March 18th, 2025 – Franz Welser-Möst led The Cleveland Orchestra tonight in the first of two back-to-back Carnegie Hall performances. The second concert will feature music of Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, but the Orchestra was forced to make a major change in the program of tonight’s concert after Asmik Grigorian announced her withdrawal for personal reasons. Ms. Grigorian, the Lithuanian soprano, was set to sing Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs and the final scene from Puccini’s Suor Angelica with the Clevelanders.
Missing a chance to hear the Four Last Songs is a real shame, but Welser-Möst took this opportunity instead to make a timely political statement in what might be one of his last Carnegie Hall appearances before his retirement in 2027:
“This program change has given us a chance to say something important about our world today. As people fight for freedom everywhere, these pieces tell that same human story. Beethoven’s Fifth shows us the journey from darkness to light. Janáček’s From the House of the Dead reveals how human dignity survives even in the most desolate of circumstances. And the Leonore Overture is, to me, simply the greatest music about freedom ever written. These works together create a profound statement that I believe will resonate deeply with our audiences in both Cleveland and New York.”
The first notes of the performance were the V-for-victory theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Besides being perhaps the world’s most famous four notes, this music represents Allied Europe’s victory over the Axis in World War II. (Russia, are you listening?)
Maestro Welser-Möst (above, photo by Fadi Kheir) mobilized the full forces of the Cleveland Orchestra for the Fifth, making it an orchestra more than twice the size of that envisioned by Beethoven. The result was an impressive, explosive sonority at the expense of contrast and transparency. In the first movement the Clevelanders’ sound was burnished and energetic as it traversed Beethoven’s volatile landscape of darkness and light.
The second movement was beautifully elegant, with notable vibrato-less hushed passages and flawless string crossings throughout the later variations of the theme. The finale was brisk without being breathless and avoided the Indiana Jones clichés that this movement often receives.
The second half of the program featured the suite (arranged by František Jílek) from Leoš Janáček’s final opera From the House of the Dead as well as Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3. These pieces both come from larger dramas about imprisonment and the liberation of the steadfast human body and spirit. If Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony lays out a hero’s abstract journey through conflict toward triumph, the latter two pieces give a much more visceral view into their protagonists’ struggles against adversity and fate.
Janáček’s suite is wonderfully off-kilter and begins with a herculean violin solo—a free-associating kind of playing that involves an almost desperate sawing away at the top of the instrument’s register. Chaotic passages of music played by smaller sections of instruments are interspersed between bursts of the full orchestra with towering clusters of sound, always grounded by the low strings and brass. Inventive sounds made by rachet noisemakers, wood clappers, percussively plucked strings, and relentless repetitive figures all have the effect of boring a hole into one’s skull, slipping toward madness.
Passages drawn from a scene in the opera in which the prisoners stage a play feature macabre oom-pah-pahs, vaudeville fragments, and whiffs of a klezmer band. The final movement of the suite is a fauvist palette of blurry chords, a luxuriously strange and gorgeously dissonant tableau that concludes too optimistically considering all that came before.
It seems odd, then, to conclude the concert with an overture. Rare, too, is the chance to hear Beethoven after Janáček. But the Leonore Overture—from the opera that would become Fidelio—is a concise encapsulation of Welser-Möst’s message for the evening.
This piece was better suited than the Fifth to the large orchestra, which was able to achieve subtle shades ranging from the bright fanfare of the full orchestra (in C-major, like the final movement of the Fifth) to the eerie distance in the flute after the portentous off-stage trumpet call.
Fidelio is ultimately about the triumph of enlightenment values over despotism. Although Welser-Möst’s program had the potential to come off as trite and facile, his linking of these two Beethoven scores to Janáček’s and his reversal of the obvious order of their performance charted an intelligent, moving, and novel course that he hopes—despite our current administration’s unenlightened displays of power—might be followed in Europe.
~ Lane Raffaldini Rubin
Performance photos by Fadi Kheir, courtesy of Carnegie Hall
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Waiting for Elisabeth Grümmer
The most-read article from Oberon’s Grove:
~ In 1967 the Metropolitan Opera held its first June Festival. Having just opened the ‘New Met’ in September 1966, ticket demand for the premiere season at Lincoln Center had been phenomenal and the Company seized the opportunity to add several performances in the month of June. This was a bonanza for the fans and also provided the general public, who were curious to see the interior of the new opera house, expanded possibilities. The Met offered some very fine casting that June, and topping the list of exciting events (at least from the fans’ point of view) was the belated Met debut of the German soprano Elisabeth Grummer.
Grümmer was 57 at the time, and had already had a very successful career in Europe and had made several top-class recordings, working with Europe’s finest conductors. She had made her debut with the Met on tour in Boston earlier that Spring and was now coming to the House in the role of Elsa in Wieland Wagner’s production of LOHENGRIN.
This was my first chance to see this opera; Sandor Konya was at that time the leading exponent of the title role, and my beloved Irene Dalis was singing her venomous Ortrud. Stalwarts Walter Cassel, John Macurdy and William Walker completed the cast. Andre Cluytens, who was to have conducted this production of LOHENGRIN, had died the previous summer and so Joseph Rosenstock was on the podium. I suppose by international standards that Rosenstock was considered a routinier but – inexperienced as I was – I was simply thrilled to be there.
Grümmer made her entrance, and I recall the entire phalanx of Family Circle standees were waiting with collectively bated breath for her first line, which she deployed with a silvery pianissimo: “Mein armer bruder!” We were under her spell immediately and she went on to sing a really thrilling Elsa and to win a very warm acclaim from the packed house. Although nearing the end of her career, Grümmer had maintained her clarity of sound; the voice had a lyrical feeling but she was able to ride the ensembles with a bit of metallic thrust. It was an exciting debut but after repeating the role once, she never sang at the Met again. (She did appear as the Marschallin at the New York City Opera the following season.)
A large contingent of fans gathered at the stage door. Sandor Konya came out and was so kind; aside from signing my programme he gave me a beautiful photo of himself as Lohengrin. Irene Dalis appeared and she even remembered me and thanked me for coming. Then the crowd began to drift away. I knew Grümmer hadn’t left yet and I couldn’t imagine why no one wanted her autograph after such an exciting debut.
After a few moments only a half-dozen of us remained. A chorister walked out and someone asked him if Miss Grümmer was coming out soon: “Oh, she doesn’t sign autographs!” Someone else emerged and saw us: “You waiting for Grümmer? She won’t sign.” The other fans left. I figured at least I would get a glimpse of her. It had been an hour since the curtain had fallen, and I was exhausted. But something kept me there.
A car pulled up; the driver got out. He looked at me and said, “If you’re waiting for Elisabeth Grümmer, you’re wasting your time. She doesn’t like giving autographs.” I shrugged, trying to pretend that I WASN’T waiting for Elisabeth Grümmer.
Finally the stage door opened and Ms. Grümmer walked out with a gentleman. They got in the car and closed the doors. But they didn’t leave. I stood by the stage door holding my program and pen, looking as forlorn as I could. I was 19 but looked younger, and I hoped she would take pity on me. The driver was pointing at me and the soprano looked my way hesitantly. Then she suddenly rolled down her window and gestured to me. Neither of us spoke, but I handed her the program. She briskly wrote her name and handed it back to me with just a trace of a smile. I thanked her and made a little bow; she rolled up the window and the car pulled away.
Click to enlarge:
Oberon's Glade 
