Author: Philip Gardner

Benjamin Bernheim in RIGOLETTO @ The Met

Above: Rosa Feola and Benjamin Bernheim in RIGOLETTO at The Met

Author: Oberon

Saturday November 26th, 2022 matinee – After reading several glowing reviews of the French tenor Benjamin Bernheim over the past few years, and hearing of his recent success in LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR opposite Lisette Oropesa at Vienna and Zurich, I decided to add today’s Met matinee of RIGOLETTO to my schedule. And I’m glad I did! This afternoon’s performance was strongly cast, from the title-role down to the Page and Guard.

This was my first time to see the Bartlett Sher production. The staging is inoffensive, with some interesting ideas; but the scene of Gilda’s sacrifice at the inn was clumsily managed. The set sometimes revolves like a carousel on high speed. Having been brought to the palace by the courtiers, Gilda seems eager when the duke comes to her, but then she seems humiliated when she emerges from the bedroom soon after. Having a bloodstain on her white nightgown might have been a telling touch.

In my estimation, Mr. Bernheim carried off top vocal honors. The voice is wonderfully clear and well-projected, with top notes that bloom. He is capable of ravishing soft singing, and he keeps the music fresh with subtle dynamic shifts. His performance was stylish and assured; I certainly hope we will hear more of him at The Met.

Quinn Kelsey’s Rigoletto (photo above) was sung with great power and commitment. His incredibly sustained “Ah no, è follia!” at the end of the “Pari siamo!” monolog was one of the afternoon’s great thrills, and throughout the opera, his vocal generosity seemed boundless. Whether it was the baritone’s decision or the conductor’s, “Cortigiani, vil razza dannato!” was taken at an absurdly fast pace, giving it a surface urgency rather than a deeper sense of feeling; but when “Miei signori…” was reached, the great beauty and tenderness of the Kelsey voice was at its most impressive. There were a few rather husky notes as the opera progressed, but overall Kelsey’s Rigoletto was a stunning performance. (I should mention here the beautiful playing of the cellist in the “Miei signori…” section).

Rosa Feola had many lovely passages as Gilda, though the sound of the voice is not truly distinctive. To me, she seems more of a lyric rather than a coloratura soprano, and some of the topmost notes tested her a bit. It would be nice to hear her as Liu or Mimi.

Aside from Mr. Bernheim, John Relyea’s Sparafucile was a big draw for me. The basso cuts a fine figure as the assassin, and his dark timbre is perfect for this music. At the end of his Act I encounter with Rigoletto, Mr. Relyea’s incredibly sustained low-F drew a round of applause.

In her Met debut role of Maddalena, Aigul Akhmetshina displayed an attractive presence and a plushy voice; she merits more Met opportunities. I consider Monterone to be a very important character in the opera; though his scenes are relatively brief, if they are powerfully delivered they can make a great impact. Today Bradley Garvin sang the role with vivid authority. As the courtiers, Scott Scully (Borsa), Jeongcheol Cha (Marullo), and Paul Corona and Brittany Renee (the Cepranos) were all excellent, and Edyta Kulczak’s Giovanna – clearly on the Duke’s payroll – had a memorable moment: as Rigoletto stands aghast at having been an accomplice in the kidnapping of this own daughter, the nurse flees the house with her suitcase. Brilliant!

How many times over the decades that I have been going to the opera have the singers of the Page and the Guard in RIGOLETTO captured my attention? Today was the first! Met choristers Andrea Coleman and Yohan Yi each stepped up to bat, and each hit a home run. Ms. Coleman has a bit more to sing, and she sang it prettily indeed; and Mr. Yi’s “Schiudete: ire al carcere Monteron dee!” was strikingly voiced. I borrowed this photo of Mr. Yi and Ms. Coleman from the Met Chorus’s Facebook page:

I met Speranza Scapucci when she was at Juilliiard; several of my young singer-friends who were studying there at the time spoke highly of her. Lately, she has come into her own, with prestigious productions on her resumé, including a debut at La Scala conducting Bellini’s CAPULETI ED I MONTECCHI featuring Ms. Oropesa as Giulietta. This run of RIGOLETTO marked her Met debut performances.

From the pit, Ms. Scapucci certainly gave us a lively RIGOLETTO; the opera swept by with a feeling of inevitability, yet she also had a handle on the more reflective passages. The only drawback, really, was her tendency to let the brass players cover the voices; things got out of hand in the ‘storm’ trio in the final act, where Mlles. Feola and Akhmetshina and Mr. Relyea were giving their all, to no avail.

Metropolitan Opera House Saturday November 26th, 2022 matinee
RIGOLETTO Giuseppe Verdi Rigoletto...............Quinn Kelsey Gilda...................Rosa Feola Duke of Mantua..........Benjamin Bernheim Maddalena...............Aigul Akhmetshina Sparafucile.............John Relyea Monterone...............Bradley Garvin Borsa...................Scott Scully Marullo.................Jeongcheol Cha Count Ceprano...........Paul Corona Countess Ceprano........Brittany Renee Giovanna................Edyta Kulczak Page....................Andrea Coleman Guard...................Yohan Yi
Conductor...............Speranza Scappucci

~ Oberon

November 25, 2022
Margreta Elkins ~ Elgar’s Sea Pictures

Mezzo soprano Margreta Elkins (above) sings Sir Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Werner Andreas Albert, recorded in 1983. Listen here.

Ms. Elkins, born in Brisbane, was a favorite colleague of her compatriot Dame Joan Sutherland. They sang together at Covent Garden (where Elkins was for ten years a principal artist) and toured Australia together with the Sutherland-Williamson Opera Company in 1965. A regular member of Australian Opera, Margreta Elkins enjoyed a special success there in 1976 as Sieglinde.

She also appeared at Dublin, the Liceu, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and was an admired recitalist, particularly in her native land.

November 25, 2022
Margreta Elkins ~ Elgar’s Sea Pictures

Mezzo soprano Margreta Elkins (above) sings Sir Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Werner Andreas Albert, recorded in 1983. Listen here.

Ms. Elkins, born in Brisbane, was a favorite colleague of her compatriot Dame Joan Sutherland. They sang together at Covent Garden (where Elkins was for ten years a principal artist) and toured Australia together with the Sutherland-Williamson Opera Company in 1965. A regular member of Australian Opera, Margreta Elkins enjoyed a special success there in 1976 as Sieglinde.

She also appeared at Dublin, the Liceu, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and was an admired recitalist, particularly in her native land.

November 24, 2022
Luana DeVol as Elektra

Above: Luana DeVol and Ricarda Merbeth celebrate their deliverance

A concert performance of Richard Strauss’s ELEKTRA with Luana DeVol in the title-role, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Peter Schneider.

The event took place at the Passionstheater Oberammergau in 2005. Note that cuts have been made.

Watch and listen here.

November 22, 2022
Leonard Andrzej Mróz ~ Rachmaninoff Songs

Polish basso Leonard Andrzej Mróz sings four songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff, with Jerzy Marchwiński at the piano.

Watch and listen here.

November 21, 2022
Ben Weaver @ The “New” Geffen Hall

~ Author: Ben Weaver

Saturday November 19th, 2022 – It is wonderful to be back at David Geffen Hall to hear the New York Philharmonic. I love the new space, which is far more attractive than the previous relic of 1960s hideousness. Bringing the stage forward to make room for seating behind the orchestra – something practically every European concert hall has been doing for decades – shrinks the auditorium and creates an intimate space. I thought I’d be distracted by the people behind the orchestra, but the design of the stage – with its horizontal lines and wood trims – creates a nice frame for the eye to focus, so my gaze was always on the players, rarely above them. (Except when someone turned on their phone flashlight to find something they dropped…that’s when one wishes one had a cannon to shoot the audience member right into the sun.) But otherwise, the hall is gorgeous.

And the sound is spectacular. For decades NY Philharmonic audiences had to listen to music land with a thud and the glorious sound of this orchestra never bloomed. No more. This was the reason these renovations were essential and long overdue. We can finally hear this great orchestra in all its sonic glory! Tonight’s concert gave us a wide range of musical styles to appreciate the varied nuances of the new acoustic.

The announced program for this concert was supposed to begin with Jean Sibelius’ glorious tone poem Oceanides. Alas, it was replaced with an Igor Stravinsky piece I’ve always found to be rather a waste of time: Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Composed in 1920 and revised in 1945-47, it is a shapeless, senseless series of tedious honking. Occasionally echoes of Le Sacre du printemps do not save it. Its premiere was not a success (“hisses and laughter”) and with good reason. Fortunately it only lasts 10 minutes. One can’t fault the wonderful Philharmonic wind section here because they played wonderfully and it is good to hear them play in isolation. I wish more music was programmed generally to showcase specific sections of the orchestra.

Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra, composed in 1937 as a sonata for two pianos and transformed into its current concerto form in 1940, is a virtuosic tour-de-force. One can easily see that the work was conceived as a sonata for two pianos because the orchestral contribution is rather spare throughout. The two pianists dominate, but the percussionists get a fair workout as well. The caustic, rhythmic Bartók is on full display here, the pianists and percussionists taking turns trading blows. The first and second movements are particularly aggressive, though the second movement in a more creepy way. The strings are struck with bows, adding to the percussive nature of the piece. Pianists Daniil Trifonov and his former teacher Sergei Babayan were spectacular. Playing – and occasionally swaying – in perfect sync, their ability to bring beauty and lyricism into Bartók’s most caustic music was magical. The three Philharmonic percussionists – Christopher Lamb, Daniel Druckman and Markus Rhoten – were in perfect sync with the two star pianists. The lighter and almost humorous final movement was a lively conclusion to this difficult work. Conductor Hannu Lintu coordinated everyone spectacularly.

Finland – home of Maestro Lintu (above) – dominated the second half of the program. Kaija Saariaho’s Ciel d’hiver – lifted from her larger 2003 composition Orion – was a gorgeous sensory experience. Saariaho has a highly unique sound palette, her ability to create otherworldly sounds are extraordinary. There’s a timelessness and weightlessness to her music; it’s as if it has always been there, like primordial space – it is all around us. The transparency of the sound can now be appreciated in the new acoustics.

Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7 – composed in 1924 – finally allowed us to hear the Philharmonic in its combined glory, and to appreciate the acoustics of the new Hall. If Saariajo’s music is like a frozen lake, Sibelius is a surging river and ocean of sound. His ability to make you feel the cold wind of a Finnish winter has always been a distinct feature of his extraordinary music. A relatively brief single-movement work, the Seventh realized Sibelius’ desire to pare down his music to the barest essentials. (Sadly he seems to have pared himself down to nothing just two years later. Only two major works followed the Seventh, and then Sibelius stopped composing – though he lived another 30 years!)

The symphony is made of 11 interconnected sections, some highly lyrical (recalling the more Romantic Sibelius of yore), and some far more abstract. The symphony’s final note, held by the strings, raising in volume and intensity – by turns sinister and unfinished – always reminds me of the harrowing Interlude in Berg’s Wozzeck, after Wozzeck has murdered Marie. A sustained note full of terror and hysteria. How can a single note contain so much emotion? And yet it can. Here Sibelius, like Berg before – although more subtle than Berg – shows us how.

Hannu Lintu has this music in his bones and brought out the most extraordinary performance from the Philharmonic. The climaxes were shattering, and because of the clear acoustic in the new Hall, they were shattering in volume and clarity, as well as emotion. The music simply glowed.

~ Ben Weaver

November 19, 2022
Orchestra of St. Luke’s: All-Mendelssohn Program

Above: pianist Benjamin Grosvenor

Author: Ben Weaver

Thursday November 17th, 2022 – The Orchestra of St. Luke’s and conductor Harry Bicket continued their multi-season traversal of the works of Felix Mendelssohn on Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall.

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor was the soloist in Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G-minor, Op. 25, composed in 1831. The 22-year-old composer’s Piano Concerto is not a standard piece in the concerto repertoire and that’s rather inexplicable. It’s a well-crafted work, with wonderful melodies, wide range of moods, and plenty for a soloist to dig into. A stormy opening from the orchestra and a quick, dramatic entry for the soloist set the tone for a wild ride. Grosvenor is an accomplished pianist and his dazzling playing was never lacking in beauty and excitement. The concerto is written without a pause between movements, effortlessly flowing from the tumultuous first to the lyrical second movement. One thing that stands out is the lack of sentimentality from Mendelssohn: he is earnest without cheap effects, and Grosvenor reflected that wonderfully. An especially lovely passage in the Andante movement passes the melody from the piano to lower strings, and here Grosvenor and the string players of the orchestra were spellbinding. A seamless transition into a quirky final movement was nicely handled, and Grosvenor continued his dazzling playing. Perhaps only a bit of humor was lacking in the whole proceeding, but I’ll place the blame for his on Maestro Bicket because this also marred an otherwise wonderful performance of Mendelssohn’s most famous work, incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mendelssohn composed the famous Concert Overture when he was 18 years old and it became a staple of the concert repertoire quickly: a magnificent work filled with whimsy, drama, and endlessly hummable tunes, it conquered the world. 15 years later Mendelssohn was commissioned to write additional music for Shakespeare’s play and – remarkably – the now mature composer managed to time-travel to his youth and compose a score as magical as the Overture had been. After a shimmering playing of the Overture, Bicket and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s launched into the Scherzo – a lively wind section driven ode to fairies (excellent playing by the flutes especially).

Hiding among the players all along was actor David Hyde Pierce, appearing seemingly from nowhere as Puck: which is, obviously, the best way for Puck to appear. Hyde Pierce’s performance of selected sections of the text were delightful: by turns dramatic (Titania shocked to discover her husband’s tricks), a wryly delightful Puck, and gravely pompous Oberon, the real ass of the play. The veteran actor and comedian of TV, film, and stage, moved effortlessly from one mood to the next, sometimes without taking a breath. A marvelous performance! I have always enjoyed Mendelssohn’s music for these melodramas in the work, and so many recordings omit them, alas. So it was a pleasure to hear this music, especially as sensitively played as it was.

Soprano Elena Villalón and mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall were most excellent Fairies, one wishes Mendelssohn had written more music for the singers. Members of the The Choir of the Trinity Wall Street were also excellent in their music; I especially appreciated their very clear diction.

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s played extremely well all night. The only difficulties came in the beautiful Notturno. Featuring extensive writing for the horns, perhaps the players got tired. The only thing missing in the whole – as I mentioned above – was a sense of humor in the proceedings. The dramatic and lyrical passages were magnificent, but a somewhat lighter touch would have been welcome. Since this afflicted both the Piano Concerto and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I’ll place this squarely on the shoulders of Maestro Bicket. Maybe he was just having one of those days; let’s blame it on a spell.

~ Ben Weaver

November 19, 2022
Orchestra of St. Luke’s: All-Mendelssohn Program

Above: pianist Benjamin Grosvenor

Author: Ben Weaver

Thursday November 17th, 2022 – The Orchestra of St. Luke’s and conductor Harry Bicket continued their multi-season traversal of the works of Felix Mendelssohn on Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall.

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor was the soloist in Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G-minor, Op. 25, composed in 1831. The 22-year-old composer’s Piano Concerto is not a standard piece in the concerto repertoire and that’s rather inexplicable. It’s a well-crafted work, with wonderful melodies, wide range of moods, and plenty for a soloist to dig into. A stormy opening from the orchestra and a quick, dramatic entry for the soloist set the tone for a wild ride. Grosvenor is an accomplished pianist and his dazzling playing was never lacking in beauty and excitement. The concerto is written without a pause between movements, effortlessly flowing from the tumultuous first to the lyrical second movement. One thing that stands out is the lack of sentimentality from Mendelssohn: he is earnest without cheap effects, and Grosvenor reflected that wonderfully. An especially lovely passage in the Andante movement passes the melody from the piano to lower strings, and here Grosvenor and the string players of the orchestra were spellbinding. A seamless transition into a quirky final movement was nicely handled, and Grosvenor continued his dazzling playing. Perhaps only a bit of humor was lacking in the whole proceeding, but I’ll place the blame for his on Maestro Bicket because this also marred an otherwise wonderful performance of Mendelssohn’s most famous work, incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mendelssohn composed the famous Concert Overture when he was 18 years old and it became a staple of the concert repertoire quickly: a magnificent work filled with whimsy, drama, and endlessly hummable tunes, it conquered the world. 15 years later Mendelssohn was commissioned to write additional music for Shakespeare’s play and – remarkably – the now mature composer managed to time-travel to his youth and compose a score as magical as the Overture had been. After a shimmering playing of the Overture, Bicket and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s launched into the Scherzo – a lively wind section driven ode to fairies (excellent playing by the flutes especially).

Hiding among the players all along was actor David Hyde Pierce, appearing seemingly from nowhere as Puck: which is, obviously, the best way for Puck to appear. Hyde Pierce’s performance of selected sections of the text were delightful: by turns dramatic (Titania shocked to discover her husband’s tricks), a wryly delightful Puck, and gravely pompous Oberon, the real ass of the play. The veteran actor and comedian of TV, film, and stage, moved effortlessly from one mood to the next, sometimes without taking a breath. A marvelous performance! I have always enjoyed Mendelssohn’s music for these melodramas in the work, and so many recordings omit them, alas. So it was a pleasure to hear this music, especially as sensitively played as it was.

Soprano Elena Villalón and mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall were most excellent Fairies, one wishes Mendelssohn had written more music for the singers. Members of the The Choir of the Trinity Wall Street were also excellent in their music; I especially appreciated their very clear diction.

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s played extremely well all night. The only difficulties came in the beautiful Notturno. Featuring extensive writing for the horns, perhaps the players got tired. The only thing missing in the whole – as I mentioned above – was a sense of humor in the proceedings. The dramatic and lyrical passages were magnificent, but a somewhat lighter touch would have been welcome. Since this afflicted both the Piano Concerto and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I’ll place this squarely on the shoulders of Maestro Bicket. Maybe he was just having one of those days; let’s blame it on a spell.

~ Ben Weaver

November 18, 2022
On the Banks of the Nile

Leontyne Price sings Aida’s “O patria mia“, her signature aria. This comes from her remarkable “Blue Album”: some of her finest singing ever, and still available.

Leontyne Price – AIDA ~ Qui Radamès verrà!….O patria mia

November 17, 2022
@ My Met Score Desk for PETER GRIMES

Above: Allan Clayton as Peter Grimes; a Met Opera photo

NOTE: This article was delayed due to problems with Typepad. Photos may be slow to load, and the musical excerpt may not play.

Saturday October 28th, 2022 matinee – I didn’t like the Met’s current PETER GRIMES production, which premiered in 2008, when I saw it in the House, but later I watched it on DVD and found it thrilling. For this revival, I pondered getting a seat with a view, but then opted for practicality and took a score desk.

I first saw GRIMES in 1983; it was a day I shall never forget. We’d been to SIMON BOCCANEGRA in the afternoon, and I was exhausted; sitting there waiting for GRIMES to begin, I thought “I’ll never make it to to end.” But moments after the curtain rose, Jon Vickers delivered his blazing first line, “I swear by almighty God…”, stepping on Swallow’s line in his impatience, and from that moment on, I was riveted. Vickers, his colleagues Elisabeth Söderström and Thomas Stewart, and a stellar lineup of singing actors (Jean Kraft, Lili Chookasian, Jerome Hines, Dale Duesing, Ezio Flagello, and Robert Nagy) gave me a thrilling first GRIMES, under the baton of the great Sir John Pritchard.

In the ensuing years, I experienced two magnificent portrayals of Grimes at The Met: Philip Langridge and Anthony Dean Griffey each made an overwhelming impression. This afternoon, the British tenor Allan Clayton staked out his own claim to the role with a stunningly sung performance. I first heard the voice of Allan Clayton on the excellent Decca DVD entitled Britten’s Endgame.

The Met Orchestra were on top form this afternoon, and the opera’s interludes – well-beloved as a concert ‘suite’ – were by turns painfully beautiful and searingly violent. The conductor, Nicholas Carter, was at his finest in these glorious passages. But he was less successful when solo voices were singing, sometimes giving too much volume and either covering the singers or leaving them to struggle for a heftier sound. The Met Chorus, with so much to do in this opera, were simply grand: “O tide that waits for no man…spare our coasts!“

Allan Clayton’s Grimes was more lyrical in sound than the other tenors I have heard live in the role, though he has good cutting power when he needs it. It was in the poetic passages of the music that the tenor made our hearts ache for this hapless, misunderstood man. From the start, his wonderfully clear diction made every word count. In the opening scene in the court, telling of the death of the first apprentice, Mr. Clayton drew us in.

As the opera unfolds, the character’s hopes for a new life are raised, only to be dashed. Mr. Clayton’s extraordinarily expressive singing caught every nuance of these shifts in Grimes’s mental state. His poignant “Great Bear and Pleiades“, where he sings of the “…clouds of human grief…” along with “What harbour shelters peace?, and “In dreams I’ve built myself some kindlier home” were hauntingly sung, in contrast to the deranged scene in which he torments the apprentice and eventually sends the boy down the sea cliff to his doom. My feeling is that Mr. Clayton’s Grimes may be the closest to Peter Pears’ in vocally capturing the personality of the doomed fisherman. Mr. Clayton’s performance deservedly won the audience’s vociferous approval.

Soprano Laura Wilde made an unexpected Met debut this afternoon as Ellen Orford. Her voice, with a somewhat girlish timbre, was appealing in her Act II scene with the apprentice, John, and especially so in her third act Embroidery aria. In more dramatic passages, the conductor sometimes failed to do the right thing, leaving Ms. Wilde to push the tone. The soprano and Mr. Clayton were well-matched in general, She was warmly received by the audience.

Balstrode fills an odd place in the opera: as one of the few true friends and defenders of Grimes, the character is key; but Britten does not give him all that much to sing. Adam Plachetka was fine in the role today.

The librettist and composer create expert character studies amongst the townsfolk of The Borough, affording wonderful opportunities for today’s cast. Prime among these is Swallow, splendidly voiced this afternoon by the excellent Patrick Carfizzi.

Two mezzo roles offered Denyce Graves and Michaela Martens many choice phrases as Auntie and Mrs. Sedley respectively. After a few warm-up notes, Ms. Graves sounded very well; “A joke’s a joke, and fun is fun!” she jibed sarcastically. Ms. Martens, with the meatier role of one of the opera’s most despicable characters (a busybody and gossip with a drug addiction,) got a round of laughs from the crowd with “I’ve never been in a pub in my life!” and pulled out some darkish chest tones at “Murder most foul it is!” and “Crime, which my hobby is...”

Harold Wilson as Hobson kicked the opera off with his strong-voiced summons of Grimes to take the oath; later, Hobson tries to evade Ellen’s offer to accompany him to pick up Grimes’s next apprentice. Chad Shelton (Bob Boles) and Justin Austin (Ned Keene) each made their mark, and the always-effective Tony Stevenson excelled as the Reverend Horace Adams. As Auntie’s two nieces, Brandie Sutton and Maureen McKay sang prettily; they were joined by Mlles. Wilde and Graves in the opera’s pensive quartet, one of the score’s unique highlights.

With this performance, PETER GRIMES seemed to edge out BILLY BUDD as my favorite Britten opera; however, that pendulum might swing back if I ever get to see BILLY BUDD again, just as the very top spot on my list of favorite operas has shifted between ARIADNE AUF NAXOS and ELEKTRA for years.

PETER GRIMES is a cruel opera; the characters (well, except for Ellen) each have a mean streak, and zero tolerance for anyone who is ‘different’. Growing up in a similar small town, where everyone knows (and minds) everyone else’s business, I learned to keep mostly to myself, leaving the world behind to live in my own dream-space filled with opera, and with longings I didn’t understand. Like Peter, I had an understanding girlfriend who protected me in a way, and soothed my sadness. My classmates were cruel, but things never turned brutal, as they do in The Borough: “Bring the branding iron and knife…what’s done now is done for life!” I sometimes wonder how I endured those long, worrisome days.

Metropolitan Opera House October 28th, 2022 matinee
PETER GRIMES Britten Peter Grimes............Allan Clayton Ellen Orford............Laura Wilde (debut) Captain Balstrode.......Adam Plachetka Mrs. Sedley.............Michaela Martens Auntie..................Denyce Graves Niece...................Brandie Sutton Niece...................Maureen McKay Hobson..................Harold Wilson Swallow.................Patrick Carfizzi Bob Boles...............Chad Shelton Rev. Horace Adams.......Tony Stevenson Ned Keene...............Justin Austin John....................Brandon Chosed Villagers: Helena Brown, Ross Benoliel, Scott Dispensa, Ned Hanlon, Jeremy Little, Patrick Miller, Steven Myles, Earle Patriarco, Jonathan Scott, Meredith Woodend, Yohan Yi
Conductor...............Nicholas Carter

Settling in at my desk well before curtain time. I opened the old, heavy score I had taken from the library, and found the incredible inscription shown below. It means that Benjamin Britten actually held this score in his hands.

~ Oberon

October 30, 2022