Category: Opera

Met’s 1961 TROVATORE on SONY

The Metropolitan Opera on SONY series recently issued the famous February 4, 1961 TROVATORE broadcast with Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli which followed by a week their wildly acclaimed joint Met debut in the Verdi opera. The 1960-61 Met broadcast season was happening without my knowledge, otherwise I would certainly have been glued to my radio. But I did not discover the Met broadcasts until the following season when the fabled Sutherland ‘debut’ LUCIA was the first time I tuned in. From then until just a couple of years ago, I hardly ever missed a broadcast.

I heard Price and Corelli many times at The Met – Leontyne I actually heard at the Old Met as Fiordiligi in COSI FAN TUTTE (in English) and Franco sang in the first performance I saw at the New Met (as Calaf in TURANDOT). I loved them both in those golden years though I knew Franco could be sloppy at times and Leontyne, over the years, developed some annoying idiosyncrasies. I’d never heard the 1961 TROVATORE so I set aside time to concentrate on it; I must say, it is a very erratic performance.

Fausto Cleva, a favorite conductor of Renata Tebaldi, takes much of TROVATORE at a breathless clip. For the most part the singers manage to keep up though there’s some scrambling here and there. Aside from Leontyne Price, who strives throughout for thoughtful musicality, the principal quartet of singers tend to sing TROVATORE in verismo style rather than treating it like a god-child of the bel canto era. I suppose there’s a temptation to snarl and bluster in the opera’s dramatic utterances and in a live performance there is no recourse other than to let the singers do what they will in declaiming the text. But it becomes a bit tiresome after a while.

Corelli is the most lachrymose Manrico I ever heard; he gives the same impression on his commercial recording of the role for EMI, though that is more artfully sung. Of course there is a lot of very powerful and exciting vocalism in his interpretation, but this is somewhat compromised by his melodramatic excesses. Upon receiving news that Leonora is to take the veil, Corelli has a little mad scene which wanders right off the musical map. But despite some slight variability of pitch at times, the utterly distinctive Corelli timbre and his sheer generosity of voice make him a Manrico on the grand scale. Interestingly, Corelli only sang this opera at the Met eleven times, retiring it from his repertory at the House in 1964. A new production in 1969 was reportedly planned for Corelli but in the event Placido Domingo was the Manrico.

Leontyne Price on the other hand kept Leonora in her repertoire for over twenty years; the great aria “D’amor sull’ali rosee” might be considered the soprano’s theme song and she sang it superbly at the gala that closed the Old Met in 1966. The warmth and shimmering beauty of her timbre provide the vocal high points of this 1961 broadcast where she manages to maintain the Verdian line while her colleagues wander into melodramatic over-accenting of certain passages. For my money, Price was not a soprano with a first-rate forte top; she was best in the floating upper phrases of a role. Corelli drowns her out on the final D-flat of Act I, and her high-C at the climax of the Act IV duet with di Luna doesn’t have any zing to it. But overall it’s wonderful to hear the soprano in all her freshness in this music. Over the ensuing years Price developed a vocal ‘style’ that could be off-putting: growling in the lower register and introducing some bluesy mannerisms that could spoil her performances for me. You don’t hear these on her commercial recordings so much, but in the House she could be very self-indulgent. Nevertheless her singing could still thrill, right to her farewell operatic performance.

I always loved the sound of Mario Sereni’s voice, so warm and attractive. For me he was at his best in verismo: his Marcello, Carlo Gerard and Tonio (PAGLIACCI) were all very fine; he did leave behind some wonderful studio recordings too, notably his Germont with de los Angeles and his Enrico on the RCA/Moffo LUCIA. But in this TROVATORE he seems way off form. I wonder in fact if he was actually originally scheduled for this broadcast since Robert Merrill had sung di Luna in the Price/Corelli debut performance and sang it again in the next performance following the broadcast. Whatever the case, Sereni seems unprepared. He sings the wrong entry line in the first scene of Act III and gets lost in the recitative on his entry in Act IV. Some handsome singing along the way is offset by serious pitch problems in the great aria “Il balen”. It’s sad that this particular broadcast should be chosen as a document of Sereni’s live Met performances; I know I can never listen to it again.

Irene Dalis was a great favorite of mine. She was a powerful stage presence and a singer who could be both passionate and subtle. Her performance is exciting but I feel of all the singers she may have been most put-off by Cleva’s fast tempi. In the Act III, Scene 1 finale Irene is pushed to the limits by the conductor’s absurdly rapid pace and it seems to me that she simply stops singing during the final bars of music. Her final scene is very impressive, though, with the quiet calm of her “Ai nostri monti” and a sustained high B-flat in her last triumphant, vindictive phrase. Ten years after this broadcast, I saw Irene’s Azucena at the Met during a June Festival performance. Despite the intervening decade of singing some of opera’s most demanding roles, she was in fact far more thrilling and vocally secure than on this 1961 broadcast.

It’s good to have a document of William Wilderman’s performance of Ferrando; his ample and darkishly dramatic singing gets the opera off to a strong start. Teresa Stratas sings the brief role of Inez and there is no mistaking her voice. She strives to make something lovely of her phrase bidding farewell to Leonora at the convent, but Price trumps her by coming in a shade early and stepping on the younger soprano’s tapering piano.

For all its flaws, listening to this recording reminded me of how much I love this opera. Despite its improbable plot, the vast treasury of Verdi melody makes TROVATORE essential.

August 29, 2011
Gertrude Grob-Prandl

While I was working at Tower, I got into a discussion one day with my boss and a couple of the other ‘opera people’ who worked there. We were naming favorite singers and in one breath I mentioned Nilsson, Rysanek, Behrens and Dame Gwyneth Jones. “Oh, so you’re a size queen!”, Bryan laughed. Well, not really…since I also loved people like Reri Grist, Patricia Brooks, Lucia Popp and Kathleen Battle. But if you want to stereotype me, go right ahead: because I do love big voices.

The four ‘loud ladies’ I mentioned above were among the largest voices I ever heard live. I guess Dame Gwyneth’s was the biggest of all though I’d also have to mention Angeles Gulin who, in a concert performance of LES HUGUENOTS at Carnegie Hall (1969) unleashed an enormous voice in Valentine’s music. But there was one voice, often described as the largest of all operatic voices in living memory, that for some reason I had never heard: that of the soprano Gertrude Grob-Prandl.

Of course I’d heard people talking about her, and I read the article about her in Lanfranco Rasponi’s excellent book The Last Prima Donnas. But I’d never heard her sing a note until about a week ago when I was sampling different versions of Ortrud’s Invocation from LOHENGRIN on YouTube. Grob-Prandl’s rendition blew me away both in terms of the dimensions of the voice and the easy top.

So I ordered a Myto recital disc by the soprano on which she sings music of Weber, Halevy, Meyerbeer, Wagner and Strauss and it’s all pretty glorious. Now I’m trying to locate her complete recording of TURANDOT. The voice does tend to go off-pitch slightly here and there, and a few notes take a split second to tonalize after she hits them – an endearing quality she shared with Leonie Rysanek.

Grob-Prandl sings Isolde’s Narrative and Curse here.

August 18, 2011
Giorgio Tozzi Has Passed Away

I’m very sorry to learn of the death of Giorgio Tozzi, the basso whose voice was among the first that I became familiar with when I started listening to opera at a very early age.

My parents had presented me with a prophetic birthday gift: a two-LP set of Verdi and Puccini arias culled from various RCA Victor recordings. Tozzi was the featured basso (the other singers were Milanov, Albanese, Peters, Bjoerling, Peerce, Merrill and Warren…what a collection of voices to cut one’s operatic teeth on!) and I literally wore out the tracks of his performances of arias from NABUCCO and SIMON BOCCANEGRA. Once my voice changed I would try to sing along with Tozzi in these arias, and also with his rendition of “Some Enchanted Evening” which my mother loved so.

Giorgio Tozzi sang Don Giovanni in the very first performance I ever attended at the (Old) Met…

…and he was my very first Hans Sachs (at the ‘new’ Met). I saw him so many times over the years: as Daland, as Philip II, as Fiesco, as Colline, Mozart’s Figaro, Ramfis and and as Count Rodolfo in LA SONNAMBULA. He sang more than 500 performances with the Metropolitan Opera (in-House and on tour) between 1955 and 1975. He created the role of the Old Doctor in Samuel Barber’s VANESSA and sings in the classic recording of that opera. Tozzi sang in the final trio from LA FORZA DEL DESTINO during the gala concert that marked the end-of-an-era closing of the Old Met in 1966.

In 1978, a few years after he had left The Met, I saw Giorgio Tozzi onstage for the last time. He sang (an acted) grandly as Oroveso in Bellini’s NORMA in a performance at Hartford CT opposite the thrilling Cristina Deutekom as Norma.

Giorgio Tozzi’s voice became widely known outside the world’s opera houses when he sang the music of Emil de Becque for the soundtrack of the film SOUTH PACIFIC (Rossano Brazzi portrayed de Becque on-screen). Tozzi later appeared in stage productions of the musical and on Broadway in MOST HAPPY FELLA.

Giorgio Tozzi sings the Old Doctor’s aria from VANESSA here: “For every love there is a last farewell; for each remembered day an empty room.”

May 30, 2011
Checking In with John-Mark Owen

Friday April 29, 2011 – Down to SoHo this morning to watch choreographer John-Mark Owen putting the finishing touches on a new solo performed by Jesse Marks, a soloist with Colorado Ballet. Kokyat and I met Jesse last year when he appeared with Lydia Johnson Dance here in New York City.

The solo, entitled Sonatae, is set to music of Heinrich Ingaz Franz Biber. It begins with the dancer in a contemplative Narcissus-like pose and then flows into space-covering movement. John-Mark, a choreographer after my own heart for our shared love of Baroque music, shows Jesse off to beaufitul advantage. I really enjoyed seeing Jesse again.

Sonatae will premiere at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center in performances on May 6th and 7th when John-Mark’s work shares a triple bill with Island Moving Co (from Newport, RI) and Cherylyn Lavagnino. Details here.

Both Jesse Marks and John-Mark Owen will be appearing in Dances Patrelle‘s GILBERT & SULLIVAN: A Ballet! at Dicapo Opera Theatre May 12th – 15th. Information here. Read about it here.

April 29, 2011
DANCE AGAINST CANCER: Gallery

Photographer Erin Baiano shares a portfolio of her images from the April 25th DANCE AGAINST CANCER benefit performance at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center. Above: New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht in a solo of his own devising entitled Tatum Pole Boogie. Daniel, along with MMAC‘s Erin Fogarty, organized the gala event.

Since I was going to be at The Met on the evening of the benefit, Erin and Daniel very generously arranged for me to watch the technical rehearsal for the programme which began at noon. In the darkened theater, Daniel took a break from his directorial duties to run thru his solo with devastating agility and effortless airborne facility. Then he immediately bounced back into director mode.

Another dancing dynamo, Alex Wong (above) performed the solo 747 chroregraphed by Rachael Poirier. At the tech rehearsal, Alex sort of marked the piece though there was enough full-out dancing to see that he was going to knock ’em dead at the actual performance. Which by all reports is exactly what he did.

A programme change left time for a solo danced by a colleague of Alex’s, Tara Jean Popowich (above).

From Carolina Ballet, Lara O’Brien and Attila Bongar (above) danced a lirico-romantic duet choreographed by Mr. Bongar. They looked beautiful together and fitted comfortably into the programme’s stellar lineup.

I had to leave the tech rehearsal before Aaron Carr and Kristina Hanna (above) from Keigwin & Co ran their duet, Love Songs. Having recently seen these dancers in Larry Keigwin’s EXIT at The Joyce, I imagine they were pretty exciting and that Larry’s choreography would grab the crowd.

Attila Joey Csiki from the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company performed the four-part solo Little Rhapsodies which Lar excerpted from his 2007 work of the same title as a concert piece for Attila. Kathy Tagg was at the keyboard to play the Schumann pieces and Attila – even in rehearsal – showed the fluid Lubovitch style with grace and commitment. On the previous weekend, Attila had danced these solos for another worthy cause, the DANCE FOR JAPAN benefit in Brooklyn. This afternoon at MMAC I snuck a peek at Atti warming up in the same studio with NYCB’s Janie Taylor and developed the idea of seeing them dance together sometime.

Janie was one of four NYC Ballet principal ballerinas to appear on the gala programme. She danced a duet with Tyler Angle choreographed by Benjamin Millepied entitled On The Other Side. This duet was made during a summer on Nantucket a a few years ago. Janie and Tyler have a great rapport and during the tech I had the added secret excitement of seeing Janie’s hair slip out of its pin-up and become a part of her performance. Tyler and Janie, above.

You can’t imagine how exciting it was for me to watch my beloved NYCB dancers in this intimate rehearsal setting. Maria Kowroski (above) danced the Preghiera from MOZARTIANA at the tech in a tee-shirt, leg warmers over black tights, and no makeup. She was able to create the celestial atmosphere of this famous Balanchine solo with her expressive port de bras and serene emotional connection to the music.

In a complete change of pace, Maria was later joined by Martin Harvey (above) to dance a sultry pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s setting of the dances from the opera CARMEN which he created for the Metropolitan Opera‘s production where Maria and Martin have performed it several times. This particular duet is set to the prelude of the opera’s third act; for me, it’s the most poignant music in that super-familiar opera. Maria and Martin were really into this passionate love duet, understandly so: they plan to wed this Summer. What a gorgeous couple!

Deborah Wingert, former NYCB dancer and a top-class ballet teacher and coach, sat next to me as we watched Amar Ramasar and Sterling Hyltin (above) in a dazzling rendition of The Man I Love from Balanchine’s WHO CARES? Yes, it was only a rehearsal but these two dancers got right to the heart of the matter. Deborah remarked how superbly they were able to fill the space while never seeming constrained by it.

I’ve seen hundreds of mesmerizing dance performances over the years but nothing hits me in the heart quite like the now-classic duet from Christopher Wheeldon’s AFTER THE RAIN. Arturo Delmoni and Cameron Grant played the Arvo Part score live for Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall (above). Even in a rehearsal with the dancers occasionally speaking to one another and once even cracking up over a small faux pas, this work generates a breath-taking atmosphere. Matt Murphy, who photographed the performance from the wings, spoke of how moved he was by Wendy and Craig’s dancing.

Matthew Rushing (above) of Alvin Ailey gave me a remarkable experience as I watched him rehearse a solo crafted for him by Earl Mosley. Matthew is one of those dancers for whom the sheer quiet joy of dance radiates thru every centimeter of his being. I could watch this man dance for hours and in this solo there was a pure rush of Rushing. I felt yet again my extraordinary good fortune at being in the same space with such a genius of movement.

The presenters: Daniel Ulbricht and Erin Fogarty. My thanks to them and to publicist Michell Brandon Tabnick for letting me eavesdrop on the process of putting a gala together, and to all the dancers and musicians who are so generous with their time and talent and so welcoming to a starstruck viewer. Special thanks to Erin Baiano for her photographic souvenirs of a grand night of dancing.

April 25, 2011
Monodramas @ NYC Opera

Tuesday March 29, 2011 – Tonight was my first visit to New York City Opera as a member of the press. I’ve been going to NYCO since 1966; my first evening with them at Lincoln Center was the opening of GIULIO CESARE when Beverly Sills made her sensational splash as Cleopatra. But even before that I had seen the Company on tour up in Syracuse and Oswego NY – I even saw Beverly before she was Beverly, singing Rosalinda in FLEDERMAUS.

Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s I went to NYCO as often as to the Met; I experienced several operas at the State Theater for the first time: CAPRICCIO, MEFISTOFELE, BALLAD OF BABY DOE, PRINCE IGOR, THE MAKROPOULOS CASE, the Donizetti/Tudor operas and many more. Singers from the Company became top favorites of mine: Maralin Niska, Patricia Brooks, Phyllis Curtin, Johanna Meier, Gilda Cruz-Romo, Beverly Sills, Susanne Marsee, Frances Bible, Beverly Wolff, Placido Domingo, Enrico di Giuseppe, Dominic Cossa, William Chapman, Richard Fredricks, Robert Hale, Norman Treigle.

In recent seasons I have gone less and less to NYCO; of couse the Company have been thru exasperating times of late, but let’s hope now that their future will be a bright one. Tonight’s triple bill of 20th/21st century works for solo female voice looked fascinating on paper, and I asked my longtime opera-companion Paul to join me.

Aside from the three principal singers and an ensemble of dancers in MONODRAMAS, the key elements of this unusual evening were the direction of Michael Counts, the choreography of Ken Roht, and the conducting of NYCO’s stalwart maestro George Manahan. The visual aspects of the evening were the work of video artist Jennifer Steinkamp, motionographer Ada Whitney, and as an homage to laser artist Hiro Yamagata.

There was one aspect of the production that I felt should be re-thought. About ten minutes before the curtain rose, a young man and woman dressed in tuxedos walked onstage before the curtain to pose and gaze about the house with in a somewhat bored manner. When the curtain rose on the Zorn the music didn’t start til these two had sauntered around the stage a while, removing the bhurkas of a couple members of the ensemble and then of the soprano. They continued rather pointlessly to participate in the action during the opening work.

After the Zorn there was an interlude in which a digitized film of flowering tree branches (quite lovely) was shown as insects buzzed and chirped quietly. While this alluded to The Woman’s lines in the Schoenberg about the garden at evening and the sounds of crickets, it went on a bit too long and then The Couple returned and removed more bhurkas to expose the women of ERWARTUNG in white dresses. All this business seemed stagey and self-consciuous and too drawn out; yet it might have worked had the orchestra then gone directly into the Schoenberg. But instead when the pit lights came up, they took a tuning break. Whatever dramatic connection was being sought between the Zorn and Schoenberg was thus lost. The Couple appeared later in NEITHER but simply as members of the ensemble, thus diluting their (pointless) presence as a link between the three works. In general, the movement group added a shifting visual dynamic to the staging; it would have been more potent in my opinion to maintain this ‘choral’ effect rather than trying to interject them as individuals into the ‘plot’.

Beyond this each work was uniquely and impessively staged, the orchestra dealt persuasively with all the demands placed on them, and the three sopranos did their utmost to assure the success of the evening. The audience were extremely attentive and focused; why can’t NYCB audiences behave like this?

The evening opened with John Zorn’s LA MACHINE DE L’ETRE, having its staged premiere in these performances. In this rather brief wordless piece, the Finnish soprano Anu Komsi gave a truly impressive rendering of the demanding vocal line. Jagged coloratura roulades occupy the vocalist for most of the work’s duration; she also whispers, speaks and screams. There is no plot, no meaning, no message other than the music itself – colorfully orchestrated with piano, celesta and a variety of percussion effects.

Backed by a ‘chorus’ of bhurka-clad dancers, Ms Komsi not only sang compellingly but moved with statuesque grace. I’d love see her again in a more familiar piece, the better to judge her capabilities.

Above: Kara Shay Thompson as The Woman in Schoenberg’s ERWARTUNG, the only one of tonight’s three works with which I am somewhat familiar, having seen a peformance of it at the Met in 1989 with Jessye Norman, James Levine conducting. That production remains vividly in the mind – the stage setting consisted of a grand piano and hundreds of white candles – as does Ms. Norman’s powerful singing. Tonight at NYCO, The Woman was portrayed by Kara Shay Thompson whose voice at first seemed more lyrical in quality than one might expect to hear in this music. She proved however to be an accomplished vocalist, taking the demands of the piece in stride.

Red rose petals fell gorgeously against the deep blue sky throughout this piece in which a deranged woman wanders thru the woods in the depths of night, seeking her lover. She stumbles upon him…literally; his corpse has been abandoned on the forest path. The Woman speaks of another Woman, a rival. Which of them is the murderer? Or are they one and the same?

Schoenberg wrote of his work: “In Erwartung the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.” Based on a case study of Freud, The Woman’s multiple personalities are here evoked by six identically dressed woman who cunningly slip down a trap door as the opera draws to a close.

When I worked at Tower, Morton Feldman’s NEITHER was a much-sought-after item; the one existing recording at the time came and went from the distributor with maddening uncertainty. If a definitive recording were to be made today, it should most surely feature Cyndia Sieden who tonight turned the fiendish vocal writing of the work into a personal tour de force. The libretto of NEITHER is actually a poem by Samuel Beckett:

“to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow
—
from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither
—
as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close, once away turned from gently part again
—
beckoned back and forth and turned away
—
heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other
—
unheard footfalls only sound
—
till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other
—
then no sound
—
then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither
—
unspeakable home”

Feldman met Beckett in Berlin in 1976 and asked the writer to provide a text for a vocal work commissioned by the Rome Opera. After replying that he didn’t like having his words set to music, Beckett finally agreed to style a brief libretto based on “the theme of my life”. He mailed Feldman the poem a few weeks later; the composer meanwhile had already started to write the music. The result, nearly an hour-long, is a unique and challenging work – challenging both the singer and the listener.

New York City Opera‘s visually rich production sets the protagonist and ‘chorus’ surrounded by high walls of textured reflective material above which are suspended mirrored cubes which fall and rise above the action. The cubes reflect dazzling light into the auditorium while the walls are illuminated in rich hues: green, mauve, yellow, red, purple by turn. In this dreamlike space the tuxedoed choristers move with stylized gestures as Ms. Sieden, in a striking black gown with train, takes on the aspect of a priestess.

I first heard Ms. Sieden singing Mozart in the film ANDRE’S MOTHER; later she was a Met Lulu and Queen of Night. It was exciting to re-connect with her tonight and find her on such thrilling form. The vocal writing lingers in a very high tessitura – clarity of diction cannot thus be expected, and the super-titles here compensated – and Ms. Sieden proved not only a mistress of the heights but also produced tone of unusual beauty, almost sweetness, with some lovely taperings of dynamic.

Watch a video featuring the three protagonists of the MONODRAMAS here. Three performances remain to catch this unusually powerful and rewarding triple-bill of music and theatre: March 31, April 2 matinee and April 8.

Production photos by Carol Rosegg, courtesy of New York City Opera.

March 29, 2011
John Mark Owen’s Sonatae II

Saturday March 26, 2011 – Choreographer John-Mark Owen invited us to watch a rehearsal of his newest work, Sonatae II, set to music of Alexander Balanescu. The duet will be shown at the 92nd Street Y on Sunday March 27th at 3:00 PM. The dancers are Jennifer Goodman and Josh Christopher, above in Kokyat’s photo.

When Kokyat and I arrived at the studio, Jennifer and Josh were putting the finishing touches on the duet.

They worked in silence with John-Mark and all the movement seemed so expressive. With a performance scheduled for the following afternoon one might have expected an atmosphere of urgency or even panic in the studio but instead there was an air of calm with the dancers taking their time to perfect the small nuances of gesture and expression that John-Mark was looking for.

With the studio time running out, John-Mark played the Balanescu music and what had been an attractive series of danced passages took on a deeper and more intense feeling altogether.

The music is just so poetic, and the dancing took wing on it.

As soon as the run-thru finished the dancers quickly bundled up and packed off to the Y for further rehearsing. All photos: Kokyat.

Jennifer Goodman is currently dancing a featured role in performances of Strauss’ CAPRICCIO at the Metropolitan Opera.

On May 6th and 7th, John-Mark Owen’s Sonatae I will be performed by Jesse Marks at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center on a programme shared with the Island Moving Company of Newport, RI.

March 26, 2011
Balanchine/Martins/Robbins @ NYCB

Sunday February 27, 2011 matinee – Today’s programme at the New York City Ballet featured a Balanchine/baroque masterpiece, a visually striking Martins ballet (photo above) set to a fascinating contemporary score, and the festive Robbins/Verdi FOUR SEASONS as a finale. The Company now leave for a week of performances in Hong Kong, and will be back at Lincoln Center for their Spring season opening on May 3rd.

SQUARE DANCE: M Fairchild, Huxley

MIRAGE: Somogyi, J. Angle, Laracey, Finlay, Pereira, Huxley (solo violin: Lydia Hong)

THE FOUR SEASONS: JANUS: J. Peck; WINTER: Janzen, Pereira, Alberda, Tworzyanski; SPRING: Muller, Mearns, T. Angle; SUMMER: Anderson, Reichlen, R. Fairchild; FALL: Seth, Bouder, Veyette, Carmena

The opening SQUARE DANCE again featured Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley in the leading roles. This is ideal casting of the ballerina role; it could have been created just for Ms. Fairchild as it shows off her polished technique and lovely presence to perfection. Anthony Huxley was again very impressive both in his allegro work and in the slow, expressive solo with its deep backbends and silky port de bras. He and Megan showed a more intense connection with one another than at the earlier performance, and both separately and as a partnership they offer a highly enjoyable vision of this vivid and demanding Balanchine ballet. Excellent corps work.

Ashley Laracey (Joe Anderson photo from the NY EXPORT: OPUS JAZZ project) is a dancer who always stands out among the bevy of City Ballet’s corps ballerinas and I am always so happy to see her in a featured role. In MIRAGE she danced with Chase Finlay, the Company’s rising young cavalier; they looked great together and Ashley showed off her beautiful extension, swift pirouettes and a lyrical style that is uniquely her own. Chase was excellent here, confirming his ascendent trajectory.

Jennie Somogyi’s innate dramatic quality instills a sense of urgency into her duets with Jared Angle, always the perfect partner. It’s been great to see Jennie so often this season, and Jared shows her off superbly in this ballet. Erica Pereira’s technical clarity works wonders in a contemporary setting and Anthony Huxley followed up his beautiful SQUARE DANCE with a fine performance in the Martins, notably his airy opening solo. The four corps couples deserve special mantion, both for their fine dancing here and for their uniform excellence all season: Callie Bachman, Brittany Pollack, Kristen Segin and Mary Elizabeth Sell with Ralph Ippolito, Troy Schumacher, Andrew Scordato and Christian Tworzyanski.

At its premiere, the composer Esa-Pekka Salonen had conducted his own score for MIRAGE; tonight Andrews Sill had the complexities of this dense, colorful work well in hand and Lydia Hong played the demanding violin part – a real physical workout – with complete command.

In THE FOUR SEASONS, set by Robbins to neglected ballet music from Verdi operas, Justin Peck summoned the seasonal deities – Russell Janzen, Gwyneth Muller, Marika Anderson and Henry Seth – who in turn escorted their respective courts onto the stage. Erica Pereira made a very pretty impression as the shivering maiden in Winter, with Christian Tworzyanski and Devin Alberda as her cavaliers. Sara Mearns swirled serenly thru the many pirouettes of Spring and looked luscious while her partner Tyler Angle gave an excellent performance with some majestic grand jetes. Their four back-up boys – Giovanni Villalobos, Allen Peiffer, Austin Laurent and Ralph Ippolito – looked handsome and danced handsomely. The tall and radiant Teresa Reichlen was provocative in Summer and Robert Fairchild was ideally cast as her cavalier, a new role for him this season.

Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette tossed off the spectacular technical fireworks of Autumn with boundless supplies of energy and pirouettes, and Antonio Carmena’s sexy and ingratiating Faun followed Bouder’s lead and tucked in some Plisetskaya kicks in addition to his other virtuoso feats.

A very sizeable audience today and nice to see so many of the faithful on the Promenade at intermssion.

February 27, 2011
Pointe & Pirouettes @ MMAC: Wendy Whelan

Monday February 21, 2011 – New York City Ballet’s principal ballerina Wendy Whelan gave an afternoon class at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center as part of their day-long Pointe and Pirouettes event. I asked Matt Murphy, dance photographer de luxe, to meet me there and he was happy to since he is as big a fan of Ms. Whelan as I am.

Wendy’s classroom was filled to capacity with dancers from many levels. Rather than ‘talking down’ to some of the youngest dancers, Wendy set the pace and complexity of the exercises and combinations quite high, giving the girls a taste of what they’ll need to be prepared to do as they dance into the future. Wendy gave gentle and helpful corrections, mixed in with more specific remarks about body placement and keys to projecting the movement into the performing space.

One thing she spoke of which I think is sometimes not given enough attention in class is using the eyes while you are dancing. Not only must you watch where you are going, but you need to look to your hand in an extended port de bras or to your foot in develope to say to the audience: “Look how beautiful this movement is!” Sure enough, I’ve seen her do this so many times when watching her from my high/side perch at NYC Ballet performances: she’ll look right up along her arm and hand and right into my eyes. This kind of contact draws the viewer into the dance and makes it personal. How wonderful to find among the photos Matt sent me this very image, above. (Of course all the professional ballerinas know this ‘eye-language’, but there’s something extra captivating about peering thru your opera glasses into Wendy’s gaze.)

I loved her barre excercise based on envelope, a move I hardly ever think about – and how beautifully she executes it. This in fact was one thing about the class that I found most intriguing: how difficult it is to look at anyone else when Wendy Whelan is in the room. But despite the allure of watching her demonstrate, she deflects attention to the students; she treats them all as colleagues and fellow travelers on the path that turns work into art.

Despite the studio being filled to bursting, I couldn’t help but wish that even more students could have had the benefit of taking Wendy’s class.

There were a few dancers in the room that I recognized from other visits to MMAC…

…including the young ballerina Amy Gilson (above) who caught my eye and Matthew’s lens.

One of the most distinctive and delightful people in the New York City dance world, Deborah Wingert – an outstanding teacher and priestess of Terpsichore in her own right – took Wendy’s class. Kokyat and I are especially enamoured of Ms. Wingert and her lovely spirit.

As the class flew by, I felt an urge to clamber up onto the piano and set the clock back by a half-hour or so just to keep Wendy and the dancers there a bit longer.

I’ve saved the best for last. I am not sure how Matthew managed in this crowded and bustling studio setting to capture this portrait of Wendy but I am so glad that he did, and I’ll let him keep the secret of this capture all to himself. It’s one of my favorite images ever of this fascinating dancer.

My thanks to Wendy, Francois Perron, Matt Murphy, MMAC‘s Erin Fogarty and the publicist Michelle Brandon Tabnick – and all the dancers – for a beautiful late-Winter day full of dance.

All photos by Matthew Murphy.

February 21, 2011
A Winter Sunday At the Met Museum

Sunday January 30, 2011 – Met Kokyat at the Met Museum today. For some reason, depite huge crowds in general, certain galleries were rather quiet. We saw lots of things we hadn’t seen before. Above: Sleeping Muse (bronze 1910 by Constantine Brancusi).

Head of Brother Onufrio by Girolamo Campagna c. 1615-1620

Madonna (detail from larger canvas) by Ettore Crivelli, late 15th century

Back panel for a church choir stall, Mainz 1723-1736. This piece was a gift to the Met in 1952 from the great Wagnerian tenor Lauritz Melchior.

Saint Mark, gilt wood Germany mid-18th century

Winter, or La Frileuse, bronze by Jean-Antoine Houdon 1789.

Lucretia by Philippe Bertrand c. 1700

Portrait of a Woman, marble medallion by Henri, Baron de Triquenti 1850.

I’ve put several images from today’s Met visit in a Facebook photo album here.

January 29, 2011