Tag: The Met

Benedetti/Jurowski @ The NY Phil

Wednesday May 21, 2014 – Vladimir Jurowski (above, in a Matthias Creutziger photo), who led a series of very impressive performances of Strauss’ DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN at The Met earlier this season, was on the podium at Avery Fisher Hall tonight for his New York Philharmonic debut. The programme featured works by Szymanowski and Prokofiev. In the days just prior to tonight’s concert it was announced that the scheduled violin soloist, Janine Jansen, was indisposed and would be replaced by Nicola Benedetti.

Ms. Benedetti (above) hails from Scotland, of an Italian family. She trained at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey and she maintains a full calendar of orchestra, chamber music, and recital engagements worldwide. A Decca recording artists, Ms. Benedetti takes an active role in music education and outreach. Tall and strikingly attractive, she was welcomed warmly by the NY Phil audience tonight following her excellent playing of the Szymanowski violin concerto #1. This was her Philharmonic subscription debut.

Karol Szymanowski wrote this concerto #1 in 1916. In the course of his musical career, this Ukraine-born but definitively Polish composer progressed from a Late Romantic style of writing thru an embrace of Impressionism (and a flirtation with atonality) to a later period when folk/national music became a strong influence.

Szymanowski’s violin concerto #1, often referred to as the “first modern violin concerto” leaves aside the customary three-movement concerto structure and instead unfolds as a tone poem with the violin ever-prominent. Tonight’s performance was entrancing from start to finish, Ms. Benedetti showing great control in the sustained upper-range motifs that permeate the violin part: here she was able – at need – to draw the tone down to a silken whisper. The composer further calls for some jagged, buzzing effects as well as flights of lyricism from the soloist; a long cadenza requires total technical mastery. Ms. Benedetti delivered all of this with thoroughly poised musicality. Meanwhile the orchestra, under Maestro Jurowski’s baton, paints in a brilliant range of colours, periodically breaking into big melodic themes that have an almost Hollywood feel. Both the piece and tonight’s performance of it were thrilling to experience, and Ms. Benedetti truly merited her solo bow and the enthusiastic acclaim of both the audience and the artists of the Philharmonic.

Following the intermission during which my friend Monica and I were enjoyably chatted up by a young reporter from the Times of London, Maestro Jurowski led a one-hour suite of selections from Prokofiev’s ballet CINDERELLA. This is a ballet I’ve never seen in live performance, though the music’s familiarity comes as no surprise. Tonight’s sonic tapestry of excerpts allowed us to easily follow the narrative, and the Philharmonic musicians gave full glory to the rhapsodic waltzes while individual players took advantage of the ballet’s numerous colorful, characterful solo vignettes. The marvelous, ominous tick-tock leading up to the stroke of midnight and the ensuing mad dash were all terrific fun. The score, full of romance, humour, and irony – and the charming introduction of maracas – provided a superb debut vehicle for Maestro Jurowski. Let’s hope he’ll be back at Avery Fisher Hall soon. And Ms. Benedetti as well.

May 21, 2014
Score Desk for I PURITANI

Above: tenor Lawrence Brownlee

Tuesday April 22nd, 2014 – This performance of Bellini’s I PURITANI at The Met marked one of the few evenings this season that I have stayed til the end of the opera. It was to hear Lawrence Brownlee in the Act III love duet and Arturo’s aria “Credeasi, misera” that I endured two intermissions – the first over-extended, the second reasonable – and a less-than-memorable Mad Scene from soprano Olga Peretyatko and a mixed-bag rendering of the great baritone-basso duet “Suoni la tromba”. It was Mr. Brownlee – along with the basso Michele Pertusi – who made the evening worthwhile vocally.

There were the usual rather alarming number of empty seats at The Met tonight, and the audience had thinned out even further by Act III. The evening started with an announcement that Mariusz Kwiecien was ill and would be replaced as Riccardo by Maksim Aniskin. Mr. Aniskin has a pleasant enough voice but had some passing flat notes in his Act I aria and his coloratura was a bit labored. His verse of “Suoni la tromba” was on the flat side, but he rose to his best work in the duet’s cabaletta. Overall he seemed out of his depth here: he should probably be singing Marcello, Sharpless, and Guglielmo. Still, I don’t regret not hearing Mr. Kwiecien tonight, after experiencing his vocally drab Onegin earlier this season.

Mr. Pertusi has a real sense of bel canto and his singing all evening was beautifully molded and expressive, most especially in the gentle aria “Cinta di fiori” and later in his flowing passage “Se tra il bujo un fantasma vedrai” in the big duet. Conductor Michele Mariotti did his baritone and basso no favors, his orchestra slugging away at “Suoni la tromba” as if it was NABUCCO.

The conductor in fact did his wife, Ms. Peretyatko, no favors either, often pushing her at the climaxes where her thinned-out high notes carried no impact in the House. The soprano’s voice is tremulous and despite good musical instincts the sound is simply not particularly attractive, and the voice is a size too small for this iconic role in a big space like The Met. Her coloratura was reasonable, and she did produce some striking piano singing along the way, notably the very sustained high B-flat at the end of her offstage solo with harp in Act III. But the high notes at the end of her duet with Giorgio and to climax “Son vergin vezzosa” were pretty much covered by the orchestra. Her Mad Scene was lacking in vocal colour; there’s nothing really distinctive about her timbre, and her interjection of laughter was lame. The cabaletta “Vien diletto” was reasonably effective but again the conductor over-played his hand while the soprano sustained a rather wan high E-flat. A couple of guys in Family Circle shouted desperate ‘bravas’ after the Mad Scene, but the applause was not prolonged. The warmth of Mr. Brownlee’s voice gave the soprano a nice cushion in the love duet though they really didn’t need to hold the final high-C as if waiting for the cows to come home. The opera concluded with “O sento, o mio bell’angelo”, the ‘lost’ cabaletta discovered by Richard Bonynge, and again Ms. Peretyatko’s thinned out concluding note was covered by the orchestra. (The cabaletta isn’t even in the score; was it ever authenticated?).

Before lavishing praise on Mr. Brownlee, I must mention Elizabeth Bishop’s excellent performance in the thankless role of Enrichetta. The mezzo made the very most of her brief role, with a real sense of dramatic urgency in her vocalism. Brava!

Mr. Brownlee’s opening “A te, o cara” was as finely sung as any rendering of this aria I’ve ever heard; it was in fact right up there with my personal favorite: Alfredo Kraus singing it in Chicago in 1969. Mr. Brownlee’s singing was golden, gorgeous and ardent, with a spectacularly sustained high-C-sharp in the second verse. After the second verse, the soprano joins in and the lovers exchange tender declarations of affection. In Chicago, Mr. Kraus had the advantage of the beautifully expressive lyricism of Margherita Rinaldi to further heighten the impact of his singing. Ms. Peretyatko tonight was nowhere near as lovely, but Mr. Brownlee had triumphed anyway.

Arturo vanishes and is not seen or heard from in Act II; he reappears, having saved Enrichetta from execution, to find himself declared a traitor and his girl-friend transformed into a mad woman. After jolting Elvira back to the reality of their love with his honeyed “Vieni fra queste braccia” and a vibrant, prolonged foray to a top-D, Mr. Brownlee launced the arduous “Credeasi misera” in which he successfully negotiated the treacherous, written high-F: of course this note sounds very un-natural and I generally feel it’s just as well not to include it, but I admired Mr. Brownlee all the more for taking the risk. In the end, it was his vocalism that lifted this PURITANI out of the ordinary and made staying til the end worthwhile.

Listening to Ms. Peretyatko in Act I, I was reminded of an evening in 1991 when Marina Bolgan was singing a dutiful, rather pallid Elvira. Then suddenly before Act II there was an announcement: the soprano had withdrawn and Martile Rowland would make her Met debut in Act II. The audience was so thrilled by Ms. Rowland’s large-scale singing and her zany assault on the climactic E-flat of “Vien, diletto” that a huge ovation erupted the moment she let go of the note. I was kind of hoping something like that would happen tonight.

Metropolitan Opera House April 22, 2014
I PURITANI Vincenzo Bellini Elvira..................Olga Peretyatko Arturo..................Lawrence Brownlee Riccardo................Maksim Anishkin Giorgio.................Michele Pertusi Enrichetta..............Elizabeth Bishop Gualtiero...............David Crawford Bruno...................Eduardo Valdes
Conductor...............Michele Mariotti

April 22, 2014
First Encounter: ARIADNE AUF NAXOS

Above: Leonie Rysanek, the Met’s first Ariadne

As the 150th anniversary of the birth (on June 11th, 1864) of Richard Strauss draws near, I was recalling the first time I heard what was to become my favorite opera – the composer’s ARIADNE AUF NAXOS. This opera had come rather late to The Met: some fifty years after its world premiere, The Met presented ARIANDE with the following cast:

Metropolitan Opera House December 29, 1962 Metropolitan Opera Premiere
ARIADNE AUF NAXOS R. Strauss Ariadne.................Leonie Rysanek Bacchus.................Jess Thomas Zerbinetta..............Gianna D'Angelo Composer................Kerstin Meyer Music Master............Walter Cassel Harlekin................Theodor Uppman Scaramuccio.............Andrea Velis Truffaldin..............Ezio Flagello Brighella...............Charles Anthony Najade..................Laurel Hurley Dryade..................Gladys Kriese Echo....................Jeanette Scovotti Major-domo..............Morley Meredith Officer.................Robert Nagy Dancing Master..........Paul Franke Wigmaker................Roald Reitan Lackey..................Gerhard Pechner
Conductor...............Karl Böhm

The opera, with it’s almost chamber-music orchestration (only about 35 players are called for) was thought by some people to be too intimate for such a large house as The Met. But the production, revived several times over the ensuing years, continued to win new devotees to the incredible Strauss score. On March 12th, 1988 the Met production was telecast live to Europe; I was there – with Kenny and Jan – enjoying a superb cast led by Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Tatiana Troyanos, and James King, with James Levine on the podium. In 1993 The Met unveiled a new and delightful production by Elijah Moshinsky with its ‘realistic’ prologue and fantasy-setting for the opera.

But, back to 1962: The Met’s house photographer at the time, Louis Melançon, routinely photographed each Met production as well as taking ‘portraits’ of the principal artists in costume. His photos graced Opera News for years, and I have several that were sent to me – autographed – by individual singers. Here are some of Mr. Melançon’s pictures from the Met’s premiere of ARIADNE AUF NAXOS:

On February 2nd, 1963, Wagner’s FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER was scheduled for a Texaco/Metropolitan Opera matinee radio broadcast. Of course I was tuned in: this was my second season of Met radio broadcasts and I was thoroughly primed for my first experience of hearing HOLLANDER, with Opera News opened to the cast page and the household warned against any intrusions on my listening. Thus I was shocked when the friendly voice of Milton Cross delivered the alarming news: the opera was being changed!

It seemed that tenor Sandor Konya, scheduled to sing Erik in HOLLANDER, was ill and so were his cover and other tenors who were in town who knew the role. It was decided to put on ARIANDE instead, since Leonie Rysanek – scheduled for Senta in the Wagner – was ready and raring to go. (ARIADNE had been scheduled for broadcast later in the season, with Lisa Della Casa the announced Ariadne; the change of opera on February 2nd thus deprived Della Casa of her chance to broadcast the role). The cast for the ‘substitution’ broadcast was the same as for the Met premiere, with the exception of Roberta Peters, replacing Gianna D’Angelo as Zerbinetta.

Without any preparation for this ‘new’ opera, I listened and – to an extent – enjoyed ARIADNE though to be honest I was not a huge Strauss fan at that point in my operatic career. It wasn’t until 1970 that I actually saw the Met’s ARIADNE: from a front-row orchestra seat directly behind Karl Bohm’s left shoulder, I was transported by a splendid cast led by Leonie Rysanek, Reri Grist, Evelyn Lear, and James King. My love affair with ARIADNE became even more earnest a few seasons later with the New York City Opera’s beloved English/German production starring Carol Neblett/Johanna Meier, Patricia Wise, Maralin Niska, and John Alexander. But that’s a whole other story.

April 21, 2014
ANDREA CHENIER @ The Met

Above: the poet André Chénier

Monday March 24th, 2014 – Seeing the vast numbers of empty seats at The Met’s season premiere of ANDREA CHENIER tonight was disheartening. In my view, The Met has been in saturation mode since Gelb took over; there is just too much Met opera available in movie theaters and via Sirius, costing little or nothing to experience.

Add to this the incredible operatic treasures to be found on YouTube these days – hundreds of complete operas from all over the globe and thousands of samples of great singers from all eras since the dawn of recording – to say nothing of CDs and DVDs, and it’s no wonder people are content to avoid paying Met prices and making an effort to get to the opera house.

But of course getting your opera via a cinema or the Internet or other reproduction removes the key element of what makes live opera so thrilling: the sound of unamplified voices being projected into the vast, darkened space of the opera house. Once you compromise that, opera’s magic is diluted. Yes, it’s lovely for people who live in East Nowhere to be able to go to an HD performance, but it’s nothing like being in the opera house.

And the once-sacred twenty Saturday matinee radio broadcasts per season have been expanded to three or four times that many performances available thru Sirius all week, every season, many of them available free via live-stream. The old Texaco broadcasts – back in the heyday of Sutherland, Nilsson, Corelli and Tucker – would make people want to go to The Met; those broadcasts hooked thousands of people on opera for life. By their very rarity they were an enticement. Now, with so many broadcasts, often featuring less-than-fabulous singing, the lure to actually go to The Met is less powerful.

But, to the matter at hand: tonight’s CHENIER featured basically lyric voices – those of Patricia Racette and Marcelo Alvarez – in the main roles. Thus one would need a very considerate conductor to assure a successful performance; Gianandrea Noseda seemed to heedlessly swamp the two singers at the climaxes, forcing them to force. Mr. Alvarez emerged from this more successfully than his soprano colleague.

In fact it was because of Ms. Racette that I nearly wrote off seeing CHENIER this season. She used to be one of my favorite sopranos: her Emmeline, Ellen Orford, Mimi and Violetta were all spectacular, and I liked her first foray into heavier territory – Elisabetta in DON CARLO – very much. Then she just seemed to go off, singing everything everywhere. The voice took on a wobbly quality, the vibrato becoming over-prominent and flatness creeping in. But when I heard her in a concert performance of Dallapiccola’s IL PRIGIONIERO in June 2013, I was quite taken with her way of handling verismo-style parlando so I thought she might be good in much of Maddalena’s music. And she was, up to a point.

Racette’s first act tonight was lovely, she sounded youthful and vibrant. But then as the role progresses, spinto power is needed and when Racette turns to pressuring her voice, things go sour. Her ‘Eravate Possente!’ in Act II was finely rendered, and Mr. Alvarez replied with a honeyed ‘Ora soave’; but as the duet surged to its climax, Racette sounded strident above F and the duet’s final note was painful. Striving for vocal drama in Act III, Racette tried to beef up her chest voice. In the opening narrative of ‘La mamma morta’ she was really pushing things; as the line went higher, she sounded stressed and the climactic high-note was pretty painful. In the opera’s great concluding duet, both Racette and Alvarez were tested by the orchestra’s enthusiastic volume (where is Joseph Colaneri when we need him?). Racette’s tone was spreading as she pushed on, ending the opera on a desperate, flattish top B. Why she wanted to sing this role at this point in her career is a puzzlement; she simply put more wear and tear on an already weary voice.

No one expected ringing top notes a la Corelli or Tucker from Mr. Alvarez, but the Argentine tenor would surely have had a better time of it with a more simpatico conductor. Alvarez’s voice is clear and warm, and he introduced many poetic effects into the music, magically at ‘O giovinetta bella’ in the Improviso, at ‘Tu sarai poeta’ and ‘Io non ho amato ancor’ and throughout the ‘Ora soave’ duet in Act II. His farewell to life, ‘Come un bel di di maggio’ in the final scene, was the tenor’s finest work of the evening. Overall, it was a thoughtful, passionate traversal of the role, un-aided by his conductor.

Zeljko Lucic as Gerard had nothing to fear from the waves of sound rising from the pit: the louder the orchestra played, the louder Lucic sang. It’s such a big, bold, authentic sound and I always want to love him, but enjoyment of his singing is compromised by his tendency to go flat. Thus it was an uneven and often maddening experience to hear him in this role that basically suits him very well. After some pitch straying in ‘Nemico della patria’, Lucic rose to a marvelous climax to the aria, and his narrative which follows where he tells Maddalena of his secret passion for her was superb. He won the evening’s loudest cheers at curtain call. If only…

Of the many smaller roles in this opera, Margaret Lattimore stood out for her strong and melodious vocalism as the Countess de Coigny: expressive singing and a juicy chest voice. Tony Stevenson really sang L’Incredibile, and John Moore (Fleville), Dennis Petersen (Abbe), Jennifer Johnson Cano (Bersi), Robert Pomakov (Mathieu) and Dwayne Croft (Roucher) all fared well. Veterans James Courtney and Jeffrey Wells presided at the Tribunal wth chilling effect. In her Met debut, Olesya Petrova opened her Act III scene – so touching – with a sustained and beautifully tapered final note of the line ‘Son la vecchia Madelon’ and later she took a very fine soft top-G, as marked dolce in the score, at ‘Puo combattere e morire’. She deserved a round of applause – and bravas – but didn’t get it.

CHENIER is a short opera, dragged long by two extended intermissions that drained the life out of it. In an odd moment, the applause after Act III had totally stopped and people were heading out when the bow lights came on and the singers trooped out for obligatory bows. It was just a little embarrassing.

Metropolitan Opera House March 24, 2014
ANDREA CHÉNIER Umberto Giordano Andrea Chénier..........Marcelo Álvarez Maddalena...............Patricia Racette Carlo Gérard............Zeljko Lucic Bersi...................Jennifer Johnson Cano Countess di Coigny......Margaret Lattimore Abbé....................Dennis Petersen Fléville................John Moore L'Incredibile...........Tony Stevenson Roucher.................Dwayne Croft Mathieu.................Robert Pomakov Madelon.................Olesya Petrova [Debut] Dumas...................James Courtney Fouquier Tinville.......Jeffrey Wells Schmidt.................David Crawford Major-domo..............Kyle Pfortmiller
Conductor...............Gianandrea Noseda

Above: a plaque at the Cimetière de Picpus honors the poet André Chénier

March 24, 2014
BUTTERFLY @ The Met: First of Three

Above: dancer Hsin-Ping Chang in the Met’s production of MADAMA BUTTERFLY; photo by Ken Howard

Monday January 20th, 2014 – Three sopranos are slated to sing Butterfly at The Met this season and I’ll be in the House for one performance by each; although I like the current BUTTERFLY production very much, as a matter of practicality I’ll be at a score desk for all three performances.

Pierre Vallet, an assistant conductor at The Met, took over the baton tonight as the scheduled Philippe Auguin seems still to be indisposed. Vallet has worked at The Met for several seasons; tonight was only his second appearance on the podium (in 2011 he led a FAUST during which mezzo-soprano Wendy White suffered a serious onstage injury). He got BUTTERFLY off to a brisk start tonight with a nimble prelude, and although there were some moments when pit and singers were not precisely coordinated, overall he shaped a very appealing performance.

Vocal honors tonight went to Bryan Hymel, the tenor who was a Met Auditions winner in 2000 and who returned to the House in triumph last season, replacing Marcelo Giordani in the arduous role of Aeneas in Berlioz LES TROYENS. Considering the difficulty, complexity and duration of many of the roles in Bryan’s current repertory, Pinkerton must seem like something of a ‘vacation role’ (that’s how Birgit Nilsson referred to Turandot). He sang with clear lyric thrust, with easy and sustained top notes zooming out into the House. The voice is fragrant and passionate; I had looked forward very much to hearing him in the aria and trio of the opera’s final act but in the event I didn’t end up staying that long.

Tonight’s Butterfly, the South African soprano Amanda Echalaz, revealed a vibrant and somewhat metallic timbre; her voice – which I would describe as ‘big lyric’ – projects well, but tonight much of the time she tended to sing sharp. This offset any pleasure I might have derived from her singing. By the end of the first act I’d decided that I’d heard enough, and I headed home after the love duet. The soprano’s bio indicates that BALLO and SALOME are in her rep; I’m wondering if she’ll wear herself out prematurely.

Tony Stevenson was an outstanding Goro: clear and musical in his presentation, he sang the role more as a lyric than a ‘character’ tenor. The pleasing singing of Elizabeth DeShong as Suzuki was another possible reason to stay beyond the first intermission but there was no guarantee that Ms. Echalaz would overcome her sharpness, and the rest of the opera is a long haul if the Cio-Cio-San is off the mark. Scott Hendricks’ Sharpless was reasonable enough and Ryan Speedo Green was a strong Bonze.

All the elements were here for a good BUTTERFLY except the essential one: a vocally inspiring heroine. In the coming weeks Kristine Opolais and Hui He will be taking on Butterfly at The Met and hopefully one or both of them will sustain my interest to the end of the opera.

Metropolitan Opera House January 20, 2014

MADAMA BUTTERFLY Giacomo Puccini
Cio-Cio-San.............Amanda Echalaz Pinkerton...............Bryan Hymel Suzuki..................Elizabeth DeShong Sharpless...............Scott Hendricks Goro....................Tony Stevenson Bonze...................Ryan Speedo Green Yamadori................Alexey Lavrov Kate Pinkerton..........Maya Lahyani Commissioner............Paul Corona Yakuside................Craig Montgomery Mother..................Belinda Oswald Aunt....................Jean Braham Cousin..................Patricia Steiner Registrar...............Juhwan Lee Dancer..................Hsin Ping Chang Dancer..................James Graber
Conductor...............Pierre Vallet

January 20, 2014
Score Desk for TOSCA @ The Met

Friday December 20, 2013 – Having greatly enjoyed the Portuguese soprano Elisabete Matos in her two previous roles at The Met (Minnie in FANCIULLA DEL WEST and Abigaille in NABUCCO) I was very much looking forward to her single scheduled Met performance of the current season. But since the Bondy production of TOSCA is such an eyesore, I opted for a score desk tonight as Matos sang her second Puccini role at The Met. {Rumor has it the Bondy production will soon be seen for the last time here in New York City; however, we cannot be sure of getting something better in their place.}

A great many empty seats in the House was not a good sign; and the audience tended to laugh freely at the MetTitles making me think there were a lot of newbies present. But Marco Armiliato, on the podium for an opera that suits him to a T, gave an extroverted, blood-and-thunder reading of the score. The first act especially was genuinely exciting in every regard.

Two bassos with enormous voices set the tone for the performance: Richard Bernstein was a capital Angelotti and John Del Carlo a stentorian Sacristan. Marcello Giordani, that most unpredictable of tenors, served notice in “Recondita armonia” that he was really in voice tonight. The aria was generously sung, with clear and expressive phrasing, a thrillingly sustained foray to the climactic B-flat, and a fine diminuendo to a very long piano on the last note.

Ms. Matos and her tenor then gave a vididly declaimed version of the lovers’ banter and they were really exciting in the sustained passages of the ensuing love duet. George Gagnidze’s Scarpia added more decibels to the evening, and his dramatic inflections were spot on. Ms. Matos lost points with me only on the phrase “Tu non l’avrai stasera…giuro!” where she shrilled on the final word: I like to hear this done in chest voice (or sung ‘from the crotch’ as we used to say of Tebaldi). Mr. Gagnidze and the Met chorus brought the act to a thunderous conclusion with the Te Deum.

Then, as so often happens at The Met these days, a long intermission seemed to drain the energy from the evening; and I have never heard such banging, thudding and shouting from behind the curtain as the stagehands struck the set.

Act II found the principals and conductor doing their utmost to restore the dramatic tension siphoned away by the long interval. Mr. Giordani produced an amazingly sustained “Vittoria!” and Mr. Gagnidze was thoroughly impressive in every regard. Ms. Matos struck off steely but not always stable high notes and made a strong dramatic impact with Tosca’s iconic lines: “Assassino! Voglio vederlo!”, “Quanto?…il prezzo?”, “Ah…piuttosto giu m’avento!” and “E morto…or gli perdono!”: these were all delivered with the intensity of a seasoned verismo diva. Her rendering of the great aria “Vissi d’arte” was persuasive in its vulnerability and the prolonged top B-flat at the climax was exciting though she could not sustain the following descending phrase of A-flat and G…and the conductor did nothing to aid her.

Faced with another extended intermission, I left after the Act II curtain. I would like to have heard Giordani’s “E lucevan…” and the big duet and the opera’s flaming finale, but the thought of another lull diminished my enthusiasm.

Metropolitan Opera House December 20, 2013
TOSCA Giacomo Puccini Tosca...................Elisabete Matos Cavaradossi.............Marcello Giordani Scarpia.................George Gagnidze Sacristan...............John Del Carlo Spoletta................Eduardo Valdes Angelotti...............Richard Bernstein Sciarrone...............Jeffrey Wells Shepherd................Thatcher Pitkoff Jailer..................David Crawford
Conductor...............Marco Armiliato

December 20, 2013
At Home With Wagner III

Above: Richard Wagner

Having taken a break from listening to Wagner at home while I was wrapped up with attending the RING operas at The Met, I picked up where I’d left off in playing CDs that my friend Dmitry has graciously made for me. These live recordings all come from a valuable source, Opera Depot, and this latest round of Wagnerian adventures kicks off with a 1966 performance of FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER from Covent Garden.

HOLLANDER was not the first Wagner opera I ever experienced in the theatre, but my first encounter with it (in 1968) was a memorable event with Leonie Rysanek (singing despite a high fever) magnificent as Senta, and Walter Cassel, James King and Giorgio Tozzi as the male principals.

Above: Dame Gwyneth Jones

For this 1966 performance from London, Sir Georg Solti is on the podium, stirring up a vivid performance that comes across excitingly in this recording which is in pretty good broadcast sound, with the voices prominent.

David Ward is a bass-oriented Dutchman and his singing is moving in its passion and despair, fierce in anger and with a touching human quality in the more reflective passages. He and his Senta, Dame Gwyneth Jones, manage the strenuous demands of their long duet very well: both the tessitura and the emotional weight of this duet test the greatest of singers and if there are slight signs of effort here and there in this recording, the overall effect is powerful.

Dame Gwyneth, just two years after her break-through performance at The Garden in TROVATORE casts out the powerful top notes before her final sacrificial leap thrillingly; earlier, in the Ballad she is engrossing in her use of piano singing and creates a haunting picture of the obsessed girl. The soprano’s well-known tendency to approach notes with a rather woozy attack before stabilizing the tone is sometimes in evidence; I find it endearing.

The great basso Gottlob Frick is a wonderful Daland, and tenor Vilem Pribyl holds up well in the demanding role of Erik; his third act aria – which recalls Bellini in its melodic flow – is passionately sung. Elizabeth Bainbridge and Kenneth MacDonald give sturdy performances as Mary and the Steersman.

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A WALKURE Act I from Bayreuth 1971 finds conductor Horst Stein (above) giving a great sense of urgency to the opening ‘chase’ music. Helge Brilioth, probably better known for his Tristan and Siegfried, sounds a bit rough-hewn at first as Siegmund but summons up some poetry later in the act. Dame Gwyneth Jones as Sieglinde shows both contemplative lyricism and the power of a future Brunnhilde; her singing is emotional without breaking the musical frame. Karl Ridderbusch is a darkly voluminous Hunding; despite a few moments of sharpness here and there, he makes a strong impression.

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The Swedish singer Berit Lindholm (above) was one of a group of sopranos – Rita Hunter, Ingrid Bjoner, Caterina Ligendza and Dame Gwyneth Jones were some of the others – who increasingly tackled the great Wagnerian roles as Birgit Nilsson’s career wound down. In 1976 Lindholm sang Brunnhilde in a performance of GOTTERDAMMERUNG at Covent Garden conducted by Sir Colin Davis, and she does quite well by the role, bringing a more feminine and vulnerable quality to her interpretation than Nilsson did. Lindholm reaches a fine peak as Act I moves toward its inexorable climax with the meeting between Brunnhilde and Waltraute, followed by the false Gunther’s rape of the ring.

Interestingly, though both the recording and the Covent Garden website list Yvonne Minton as Waltraute in this performance, there is some question that she might have been replaced last-minute by Gillian Knight; in fact, some listings for this recording on other releases do show Knight singing Waltraute. A delicious mystery, since whichever mezzo it is is impressive indeed. (I’ve left an inquiry on the Opera Depot listing, perhaps someone can shed further light…)

Jean Cox certainly has an authentic Wagnerian voice though at times in Act I his singing falls a shade below pitch. The wonderful basso Bengt Rundgren sounds fine as Hagen in Act I, and his half-siblings are Siegmund Nimsgern – later a Bayreuth Wotan – as Gunther, and Hanna Lisowska as Gutrune, a role she repeated at the Met when the ‘Levine’ Cycle was filmed for posterity.

As an admirer of the Norn scene, I’m very pleased with the three women who sing this fantastic music here: Patricia Payne, Elizabeth Connell and Pauline Tinsley. Ms. Payne is steady and sure of voice and what a delight to hear a future Isolde (Ms. Connell) and Kundry (Ms. Tinsley) in these roles; Ms. Tinsley dips impressively into her chest voice at one point, an unusual and exciting effect.

Sir Colin Davis builds the great span of the prologue/Act I persuasively; a few minor orchestral blips here and there are barely worth mentioning. Once Waltraute arrives at Brunnhilde’s Rock the conductor attains a heightened level of dramatic intensity and the act ends excitingly.

Act II opens with the mysterious conversation between Alberich and his slumbering son, Hagen. Zoltán Kelemen, who was Karajan’s Alberich when the conductor inaugurated his RING Cycle at The Met (a project from which the maestro withdrew after the first two operas) makes a fine effect, and Mr. Rundgren maintains his sturdily sung Hagen throughout this act. Jean Cox is very authoritative as he declaims his oath on Hagen’s spear; any misgivings about him from Act I are swept away here. Berit Lindholm may lack the trumpeting, fearlessly sustained high notes of the more famous Nilsson, but her Brunnhilde is exciting in its own right, with her anguished cries of ‘Verrat! Verrat!’ (“Betrayed!”) a particularly strong moment.

Whether she is the Waltraute or not, Gillian Knight is definitely one of the Rhinemaidens, joined in melodious harmonies by Valerie Masterson and Eiddwen Harrhy for the opening scene of Act III. There’s some vividly silly giggling from this trio, and Ms. Masterson in particular sounds lovely – an augury of her eventual status as a fabulous Cleopatra.

Mr. Cox has impressive reserves to carry him thru Siegfried’s taxing narrative – he’s at his best here – and if Ms. Lindholm’s voice doesn’t totally dominate the Immolation Scene, she’s very persuasive in the more reflective passages of Brunnhilde’s great concluding aria. Sir Colin Davis had built the opera steadily and with a sure sense of the music’s architecture; he saves a brilliant stroke for the end of the opera when he does not take the ‘traditional’ pause before the reprise of the ‘redemption thru love’ theme but instead sails forth into it with impetuous fervor.

There were times while listening to this performance when I wondered if this was a broadcast performance or was recorded in-house. The voices do not always have the prominence we associate with broadcast sound, but perhaps the micorphones were oddly placed. At any rate, GOTTERDAMMERUNG has again made its mark as the culmination of the great drama of The RING.

July 30, 2013
Score Desk for DON CARLO

Monday February 25th, 2013 – A powerful line-up of male principal singers drew me to this performance of Verdi’s DON CARLO at The Met. The women in the cast seemed less interesting by far; having seen the production before – and feeling no need to see it again – I took a score desk and settled in.

DON CARLO was for years my favorite opera, but then the German repertory began to edge out the Italian in my heart and soul. Now ARIADNE AUF NAXOS, ELEKTRA and DIE WALKURE are in a sort of three-way tie for the top spot. But I still love DON CARLO and always go when it is performed. I’m not crazy about the Fontainebleau scene, and I never watch the Auto da Fe since the sight of people burning other people alive for the greater glory of some fiendish imagined god (or rather, to maintain the power of the men who created him and sustained the myth thru blood and force over the centuries) is revolting.

Negative reviews of Loren Maazel’s conducting and of Barbara Frittoli’s singing as Elisabetta had me thinking in advance that this might be a partial CARLO for me. Added to the prospect of two Gelb-intermissions, and the fact that I was already feeling tired when I got there, it seemed that a very long evening was loooming ahead. But I found myself drawn in by the opera itself, and I always enjoy the experience of being in the House with the score in front of me. I stayed to the end and on the whole felt it was a very good evening, particularly thanks to the superb performances of Dmitry Hvorostovsky and Ferruccio Furlanetto as Posa and Philip II respectively.

To be sure, some of Maestro Maazel’s pacing was slow. To me his conducting registered a measured sense of grandeur and dignity, and of events unfolding with a sort of epic inevitability. Often considered Verdi’s most purple opera – the colour of royalty evoked in sound – I felt Maazel’s concept worked well: there were lively passages along the way, and his Auto da Fe scene was amply majestic and well-structured. For the most part he kept his singers at the forefront; in a few places they needed all their reserves of breath to sustain the line thru the slow tempi. But, following the score, I thought the conductor had things well in hand.

Maazel experienced some boos at his solo bow; I wonder if it was pre-meditated since it seemed to be coming from one area of the Family Circle. Recently while my friend Dmitry and I were having a pre-PARSIFAL supper, I could overhear a woman in the next booth telling her companion that she was planning to boo conductor Daniele Gatti. If she did, it got lost in the cheers. Maazel’s conducting was quirky but worked well to my ears; the only potentially boo-able performance was that of Ms. Frittoli but the audience tolerated her with polite applause.

I find the Fontainebleau scene a needless introduction to the evening. Verdi sanctioned its elimination for performances in Italy following the premiere in Paris where five-act operas were de rigeur. Some people say, “Oh, it gives the opera context!” Undoubtedly. But we lived without it for years, savoring the gloriouly dark horn theme which opens the four-act version and immeditely sets us in the mood for this opera about royalty and religion. Tonight, with Ms. Frittoli sounding very wary, the scene seemed even more expendable than ever. It makes for such a long night, even under the best of circumstances.

The soprano’s perilous performance serves as a reminder that a vocal career is short enough without quickening its demise by singing roles that are too heavy. Ms. Frittoli will be remembered in New York City for her exquisite singing as Desdemona in 1999; she was also a particularly fine Mimi, and as recently as 2005 she managed an impressive Fiordiligi by manipulating the dynamics to control the effects of a widening vibrato. But singing things like the Verdi REQUIEM and Donna Anna have taken their toll on her lyric instrument. Tonight the vibrato was painfully evident even at the piano level. She managed to avert disasters, though a high B-flat in the quartet was scary and she could not sustain the floated B-natural in the final duet, on “…il sospirato ben”, one of the role’s most affecting moments. Overall it was sad to experience this voice in its current state. The news that she’ll be singing Tosca later this year in Europe does not bode well.

These performances of Elisabetta were originallly slated for Sondra Radvanovsky; when Sondra moved to BALLO instead, the Met turned to Ms. Frittoli. They should have cast about for a more appropriate alternative. When I think of the wonderful Elisabettas I have experienced – Caballe, Kabaivanska, Freni, and Radvanovsky as well as Marina Mescheriakova’s flawless Met debut in the role – Ms. Frittoli’s pales into a haze.

Anna Smirnova’s voice does not always fall pleasantly on the ear, being rather metallic. But she is a skilled singer who managed the filagree of the Veil Song very well and pulled out all the stops for an exciting “O don fatale” with brazenly sustained high notes.

Don Carlo is a bit heavy for Ramon Vargas but this very likeable tenor sang quite beautifully through most of the evening. His voice is clear and plaintive, his singing stylish and persuasive. Only near the end of the opera did a few signs of tiredness manifest themselves. His delicious singing of “Qual voce a me del ciel scende a parlar d’amore?” in the love duet was a high point of the evening.

Eric Halvarson’s Inquisitor was powerully sung and stood up convincingy against the overwhelming Philip II of Ferruccio Furlanetto. The two bassos had a field day, trading thunderbolts in their great confrontation. Basso Miklos Sebestyen was a very impressive Friar (the Ghost of Charles V), drawing a round of applause fo his sustained low F-sharp in the St. Juste scene of Act I. Jennifer Holloway was a very fine Tebaldo but Lori Guilbeau, who has a pretty sound, seemed not to be well-coordinated with the pit as she sang her offstage lines as the Celestial Voice.

The towering magnificence of Dmitry Hvorostovsky‘s Posa and Ferruccio Furlanetto‘s Philip II put the performance on a level with the greatest Verdi experiences of my opera-going years. Dima’s singing was velvety and suave, his breath-control mind-boggling, his singing affecting, elegant and passionate by turns. His high notes were finely managed and marvelously sustained.

Mr. Furlanetto’s glorious singing is a throwback to the days when great Italian voices in every category rang thru the opera houses of the world. Now nearing his fortieth year of delivering generous, glorious vocalism, the basso’s dark and brooding tones fill The Met with a special sonic thrill. His singing, so rich and deeply-felt, can thunder forth at one moment and then draw us in with hushed, anguished introspection the next. From first note to last, Furlanetto’s Philip II was simply stunning. His hauntingly tender musing on the phrase “No…she never loved me…her heart was never mine…” just before the epic climax of his great monolog moved me to tears.

There were huge eruptions of applause and cheers after both the baritone and the basso finished their big arias; but applause nowadays tends to dwindle rather quickly and the days of show-stopping aria ovations are largely a thing of the past.

There were lots of empty seats which surprised me: with this starry assembly of male singers and the season’s biggest name from the conducting roster involved, I expected a fuller house.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Ferruccio Furlanetto

Metropolitan Opera House February 25, 2013
DON CARLO Giuseppe Verdi Don Carlo...............Ramón Vargas Elizabeth of Valois.....Barbara Frittoli Rodrigo.................Dmitri Hvorostovsky Princess Eboli..........Anna Smirnova Philip II...............Ferruccio Furlanetto Grand Inquisitor........Eric Halfvarson Priest Inquisitor.......Maxime de Toledo Celestial Voice.........Lori Guilbeau Friar...................Miklós Sebestyén Tebaldo................ Jennifer Holloway Count of Lerma..........Eduardo Valdes Countess of Aremberg....Anna Dyas Flemish Deputy..........Alexey Lavrov Flemish Deputy..........Paul Corona Flemish Deputy..........Eric Jordan Flemish Deputy..........Evan Hughes Flemish Deputy..........Joshua Benaim Flemish Deputy......... David Crawford
Conductor...............Lorin Maazel

February 25, 2013
The Third Kingdom

Monday May 28, 2012 – By this, my third ABT BAYADERE within a week, certain aspects of the ballet were not quite holding my attention. Contributing to my inability to focus during Act I were a pair of people in the next box who wouldn’t shut up. They were obviously Cojocaru fans, since every move the ballerina made caused them to turn to one another and comment, with animated gestures. It seemed to me they missed about half of her performance as they analyzed her play-by-play. They were just out of range for shushing. So I retreated to the Family Circle where there were rows of empty seats; I watched my third ravishing Kingdom of the Shades from on high, then decided I’d had enough BAYADERE for one season and went home.

The thrills of the evening were provided by Herman Cornejo (photo at top) who was I believe dancing Solor at The Met for the first time. He was simply splendid, a lover by turns ardent and distraught, a young prince of a fellow caught in a triangle not of his own devising. His dancing was magnificent; his Act I solo at the betrothal festivities simply thrilling – the audience went wild – and he was equally impressive in the Shades variation. Herman’s partnering was gallant and smooth, and he maintained his cool command even when the feather in his headpiece went somewhat awry in Act I. And he’s just such a handsome man, you can’t help loving him. My only regret in leaving early was not to be present for the final curtain calls where, I feel certain, Herman would have received a dazzling ovation.

Alina Cojocaru danced beautifully as Nikiya and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her; unfairly (and ironically) the antics of her two admirers in the next box kept me from fully engaging in her performance in Act I. In Shades, she had a lovely lightness of movement that was captiviating, though I did feel at times she was not getting just the tempo she wanted from the pit. An opera singer can communicate to an attentive conductor when she wants to go a bit faster or slower, but there’s really no way for a dancer to do this unless she simply dances on at her own pace and hopes the orchestra will catch up. I wonder if I’d have been more drawn into Cojocaru’s portrayal if she’d been my first rather than my thrid Nikiya of the week. Hee Seo had successfully mined the deep lyricism and mystery of the role, and Polina Semionova’s dramatically nuanced interpretation and her breath-taking dancing somehow held more resonance for me, though Cojocaru was nothing short of sublime.

The scheduled Gamzatti, Natalia Osipova, was ill and was replaced by Isabella Boylston, repeating the role in which she made a very fine impression last week. The trio of solo Shades – Sarah Lane, Maria Riccetto and Yuriko Kajiya – danced grandly and were well-differentiated. Roddy Doble was an especially vivid High Priest. In the third scene of Act I, I had a very hard time prying my opera glasses off Simone Messmer; whenever she was onstage I was enslaved.

May 28, 2012
ABT BAYADERE: Seo/Muntagirov/Boylston

Wednesday May 23, 2012 – Tonight was the first of three BAYADEREs I’ll be seeing at ABT. Although this evening’s cast was devoid of top-tier stellar names, the evening turned out very nicely and my friend Kokyat enjoyed his first experience of watching the Kingdom of the Shades. Hee Seo, above, danced the role of Nikiya, with Isabella Boylston as Gamzatti and an ABT newcomer Vadim Muntagirov as Solor.

Going to the ballet at The Met is not a particularly rewarding experience. The place is simply too huge and you feel detached from the action; even when I sit in the orchestra, the dancers seem miles away. Tonight we were in Balcony Row A which was fine until a group of young people snatched the seats behind us after the first intermission and were restless and whispery. We moved further back for the last act. Sadly, there were tons of empty seats on every level; the Family Circle was virtually empty.

There’s also the distracting sound of toe shoes clomping on the Met stage. Mr. B made sure that this would not be a problem at His House, but at The Met – which was built to project sound from the stage – it sometimes sounds like horses are galloping around.

For all that, the performance succeeded in making a fine impression thanks to the work of the three principals and several fine individual contributions among the smaller roles. Hee Seo was a beautiful Nikiya to behold, her dancing was lyrical and devoid of theatricality. It’s a long and demanding role and the ballerina maintained her dramatic focus and her refined musicality throughout, leaving us with several luminous images.

Vadim Muntagirov (above, photo by Sian Trenbeth) is a slender, elegant danseur with a lovely technical polish. His airy leaps and swift footwork held the opera glasses in place throughout his variations, with deep backbends in the concluding poses making an especially fine impression. He and Ms. Seo created a dreamy partnership as their adagio unfolded.

Isabella Boylston (above) was Gamzatti. I overheard someone refer to the character as an ‘evil princess’, but is she really evil? Like Amneris in Verdi’s AIDA, she’s entitled – she’s used to having her way. And, it should be pointed out, Nikiya tries to kill her first. Yes, the snake in the basket thing is cruel but you have to admire Gamzatti’s inventiveness. At any rate, Ms. Boylston was excellent both in her dancing and presentation of the character; in the third act especially her pirouettes were radiant. I look forward to her upcoming Odette/Odile.

Craig Salstein was the Bronze Idol. His technical clarity and vivid delineation of this short but demanding role save me having to publish a disclaimer: he’s one of my opera buddies. I know he’s always thrilled to be on the stage where Tebaldi and Corelli sangs their hearts out. Bravo, Craig! Dancing two roles, including the third solo varation in Kingdom of the Shades, Simone Messmer is one of the most captivating dancers I’ve ever encountered. Technique and presence are abundant, but Simone also has an intangible quality that sets her apart. And it was fun picking out dancers we’ve met in other contexts: people like Sean Stewart, Eric Tamm, Nicola Curry and Puanani Brown.

Yes, parts of BAYADERE – including much of Act I – are hokey. But once Solor takes up the hookah, we know we’re about to be transported to that elusive Kingdom of the Shades. It’s an experience that always makes ballet-going worthwhile.

May 23, 2012