tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26652369780842949682024-03-18T09:22:11.697-04:00OPERA OBSESSIONLucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.comBlogger440125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-4012027609263394052018-02-22T16:18:00.003-05:002018-02-22T16:19:06.088-05:00Semi-Scholarly Summary: Bringing Back Euridice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo (c) Cantanti Project/Lucas Godlewski</td></tr>
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that claimants to the title of First Opera are many, though Monteverdi's Orfeo usually makes it into the textbooks. This weekend, NYC will get the <a href="http://www.cantantiproject.org/">Cantanti Project</a>'s performance of the earliest extant operatic score. As a historian, I like the phrase "first extant operatic score": it fills the mouth and rolls off the tongue. Not only is Giulio Caccini's <i>Euridice</i> thus a landmark in the hectically productive years of the early seventeenth century (it was published in 1600), it is a highly self-conscious manifesto about the power of music.<br>
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Conductor Dylan Sauerwald, who will conduct the performances, has argued that, although "lines in music history are usually blurry... the baroque was an explosion." Not only was Caccini visibly influential in this creative explosion, he was determined to be. His <i>Euridice</i>, written to a libretto also used by Peri, was on the only possible topic for a composer seeking to recapture the power harnessed by the ancient Greeks -- that of music to create harmony, to inspire madness, and indeed to overcome death itself. From the 1580s onwards, the philosophers and artists of Florentine salons had been having vigorous debates about what music should do, and what music could be -- if only their own age could recapture the genius of the ancients. I confess that, even as a habitual operagoer who grew up on Greek mythology as retold by Bulfinch and Hamilton, I observed the early operatic fascination with Orpheus and Euridice without having the penny drop: that it was chosen precisely because it was <i>the</i> narrative of how skillful poetry, skillfully set against music, could break the heart and change the world.<br>
</div></div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2018/02/semi-scholarly-summary-bringing-back.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com148tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-184724724272273372017-11-26T13:29:00.000-05:002017-11-26T13:29:08.140-05:00Dante's Music of Paradise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dante and the Divine (Gustav Doré)</td></tr>
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I recently finished teaching Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i>. Predictably, I made much of how the poem uses music. Hell<i> </i>has only unholy noise: crashing stones, groans, shouts, and, famously, a demon who "made a trumpet of his ass" in <a href="https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-21/">Inferno 21</a>. When Dante and Virgil finally make it to Purgatory, they are welcomed with the blessedly familiar sounds of the Te Deum. Unsurprisingly, Paradise features the poem's most dense and ecstatic music. As Dante ascends further into heavenly light and heavenly truth, he is also, increasingly, surrounded by singing. Dante's paradise is filled not only with "the glory of the One who moves the universe" (<i>Paradiso</i> I:1-2) but with saints who dance for joy, and angels who sing in more-than-human voices. The music of Dante's Paradise is dense, sweet, and unlike anything he has ever heard, though it often sets liturgical texts that he knows very well.<br>
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Thanks to a student, I recently learned that the Swiss composer <a href="http://www.helenawinkelman.ch/">Helena Winckelman</a> has taken on the challenge of imagining and creating music for Dante's quintessentially indescribable Paradise. 18 voices, an unsurprising harp, and a delightfully surprising contrabass clarinet sing melodies that, especially at the beginning, circle each other like the circles of Paradise. In the close textures of the music -- several sets of harmonies overlapping with each other, sometimes with combination tones -- there is something of a sense of human incapability. Winckelman's use of spectral composition techniques is not only an aural adventure; it's also a homage to Dante. Turning light into language is what Dante is doing throughout <i>Paradiso</i>, trying to express the inexpressible, pushing his chosen medium of expression to its limits.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/11/dantes-music-of-paradise.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-69332743161333552912017-10-03T16:56:00.003-04:002017-10-03T17:38:56.301-04:00Jonas Kaufmann in French<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://sonyclassical.com/releases/88985390832">Jonas Kaufmann's latest album</a>, <i>L'Opéra</i>, is not flashy, but it is substantial. It showcases an expressive range that is impressive -- if not, at this stage of his career, surprising -- and an artistic thoughtfulness that is one of the things I have long valued in him. In roles ranging from Romeo to Aeneas, it is those at the latter end of the spectrum that fit the current weight and timbre of his voice better, but there is something in each to be savored. Not least among the album's merits is the ravishing quality of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester under Bertrand de Billy. Indeed, the shimmering, breathless quality of the strings and woodwinds would be reason enough to keep "Ah! lêve-toi, soleil!"<br>
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It's been several years since I've had the chance to hear Kaufmann live, so for me, it's both pleasing and reassuring to hear him recorded in such fine form. His phrasing is exquisite, his control of dynamics assured. His gift for caressing text to the point of indecency and past it is also on full display. His Werther has been much recorded, but I am glad to have this version of "Pourquoi me reveiller," superbly controlled and superbly partnered by the orchestra. Here and in Wilhelm Meister's aria from <i>Mignon</i>, Kaufmann's phrasing approaches the hypnotic. Though I might quibble stylistically with the choices on a few of the arias, I could never fault the musicianship. The album's breadth, including several rarities, makes it a worthy acquisition for aficionados of nineteenth-century French opera, as well as for Kaufmann's devotees.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/10/jonas-kaufmann-in-french.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-4470820522371871102017-08-14T01:07:00.000-04:002017-08-14T01:15:03.422-04:00Höre ich Zigeunerweisen? Operetta in Ohio<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This past Thursday, I saw the closing performance of <i>The Countess Maritza</i> at the Ohio Light Opera festival, fortuitously located in my new hometown. (A synopsis of the work, which contains multiple disguises and mistakes in identity, may be found <a href="http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_c/countess_maritza.htm">here</a>.) My expectations were confounded on several fronts. The voices of Tanya Roberts, in the title role, and tenor Daniel Neer, as her ill-fated suitor, were welcome new discoveries to me. My impressions of the performance as a whole were conflicting; upon reflection, my predominating reaction is bewilderment. I plan to make a more systematic viewing of the festival next year (I arrived just in time for its final days), in hopes of fathoming its enigmas, for they are many. But of <i>The Countess Maritza</i>: I found it to be a frustrating performance. I would have been better pleased had it evinced less polish, less archness, and more heart.<br>
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Of the generic scenery I make no complaint. Indeed, a painted backdrop that proclaims, with studied ambiguity, "Central Europe," and a versatile Neoclassical portico that could probably, at need, also be the home of Major-General Stanley or a municipal building in River City argue admirable thrift and resourcefulness in a small company. But the lack of specificity in the performance was another matter. The choreography for the chorus was repetitive, and struck me as stereotypical. The fact that it was the closing matinée may, of course, have done it no favors. The principals, too, were obliged to stand and deliver with depressing regularity. Wide-eyed astonishment or naiveté expressed to the audience is simply not as funny, in such a context, as astonishment and naiveté behind an unbroken fourth wall. Among other things, the English translation by Nigel Douglas doesn't nod towards any mixture of Hungarian and German. It's praised in the program booklet as one of the best libretto translations in the repertoire, and I frankly shudder at the implication. The double entendres were invariably delivered with ponderous deliberateness. I have decided to institute a standard test for all operetta productions I may see in future: do they have at least as much romantic and sexual tension as the classic film of <i>The Sound of Music</i>? The point of comparison was first raised at a <a href="http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2015/01/a-not-so-merry-widow-2.html"><i>Merry Widow</i> performance</a>, which also failed to meet it.<br>
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The orchestra -- to its credit -- clearly knew that sexual and dramatic tension were present in the score, and where. The harmonies and dynamics told us as much vividly, but I failed to perceive any corresponding urgency on stage. I would be remiss if I did not mention the dignified and impassioned performance of Alec Norkey as the on-stage violinist. Under the leadership of Wilson Southerland, the orchestra was cohesive, lively, and pleasingly nuanced at critical moments, despite a few issues of stage-pit synchronization. But this musical awareness alone proved insufficient, in my view, to save the dramatic tension.<br>
</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/08/hore-ich-zigeunerweisen-operetta-in-ohio.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-75201526561627999572017-08-10T13:06:00.001-04:002017-08-10T13:06:58.176-04:00Blogging Backlog: Einspringen at SummerStage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Almost an entire (calendar) season has elapsed since I attended the first in the Met's SummerStage series. I won't weary you, Gentle Readers, with a tale of my travails, but having moved and started a new job, <i>inter alia</i>, I've been fairly comprehensively busy. In retrospect, the evening's tranquility takes on something of the quality of an all-too-brief idyll. Several of the pieces, understandably, were drawn from operas due to be performed in the Met's upcoming season. Whether the others were chosen by singers or programmers, I was impressed by the judicious mixture of familiar crowd-pleasers and more unusual fare. This was true, I noted, for all the programs on offer in the series; I was delighted to hear the Cherry Duet and "Seien wir wieder gut." Although the singers were miked, this was better-handled and less distracting than in previous years. A quibble, for me, was the omission of any description of the music in the program. The glossy paper of the programs must be expensive, but I still think that two-line summaries of the selections' content and dramatic context and function would be helpful for the intended audience. I'm sure the Met has people on staff who could write them. <i>I'd </i>write them! On the evening, Mary Jo Heath presided, proving herself (excitingly) to be more than a disembodied voice, and the singers -- Susanna Phillips, Elizabeth DeShong, and Petr Nekoranec -- also glossed some of their offerings.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/08/blogging-backlog-einspringen-at.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-20226058921751006682017-06-11T21:01:00.002-04:002017-06-11T21:01:53.107-04:00Sunday Special: Viva il vino spumeggiante<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I subscribe to John Keats' belief that a recipe for a perfect summer's idyll involves "books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know." And there's something about the long, languorous evenings of early summer that tempts me to ponder cocktail recipes. It's a matter of puzzlement to me that this is an area where opera has made fewer cultural inroads, it would seem, than in that of food. We have <a href="https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/opera-cake">opera cake</a>, we have <a href="http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/peches-melba-232640">pêches Melba</a>, tournedos Rossini, etc. etc. So why not cocktails, when so many opera characters, in so many situations, invite everyone to drink? I first discovered this dearth when the Beloved Flatmate and I were planning a party, and several years on, the situation seems to be fundamentally unchanged.<br>
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A few opera houses, at least, have embraced the idea of opera-inspired tippling. The Met has several themed drinks on their <a href="http://www.metopera.org/metoperafiles/visit/food_drink/PDFs/GT%20Wines%20BTG%2003%2022%2016.pdf">menu</a>; "Lulu's Disposable Lover" might be my new favorite cocktail name. Seattle Opera also commissioned a series of themed <a href="http://www.seattleoperablog.com/search/label/Eat%20Drink%20Sing">drink/food pairings</a>, of which my favorite is the <a href="http://www.seattleoperablog.com/2011/06/eat-drink-sing-2-prelude-carmen.html"><i>Carmen</i> cocktail</a>, with vodka, cointreau, and champagne. (The <i>Attila</i> sounds appropriately dangerous.) Beyond this, I have found several delights, but fewer than I expected.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/06/sunday-special-viva-il-vino-spumeggiante.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-83619018382140340472017-05-02T17:12:00.000-04:002017-05-03T10:30:39.930-04:00Semi-Scholarly Summary: Cyrano de Bergerac<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This evening sees the opening of Franco Alfano's <i>Cyrano de Bergerac</i> at the Met. It's being marketed as Puccini-like, but the comparison, in my view, over-simplifies the work of both composers. To me, Alfano's <i>Cyrano</i> seems a curious blend of romantic structure and dramatic spectacle, and experimentation in orchestral explorations of the central characters' psyches. I'd be inclined to say that it provides, as Alexandra Wilson has suggested for the late works of Puccini, a sort of alternate vision of how modern opera might have developed in the Italian tradition. From a scholarly perspective, it's received comparatively little attention, even when measured against Alfano's other works. I was surprised to discover this, given my personal fascination with how Alfano's opera functions as an adaptation of Edmond Rostand's 1898 play, which is itself a homage to the five-act dramas of France's golden age of theatre in the seventeenth century. I grew up with <a href="https://www.abebooks.fr/rechercher-livre/titre/cyrano-de-bergerac/auteur/dubout/">an edition illustrated by Dubout</a>, and, later, wore out a VHS of <a href="http://amzn.to/2ptIeJG">the Gérard Dépardieu film</a>; this is one opera I came to via its source text, rather than the other way around.<br>
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Cyrano de Bergerac, subtitled as a <i>commedia eroica, </i>was first performed in the Paris of 1936. I thought that the choice to write an opera based on a heroic fighter of doomed causes in the increasingly totalitarian Europe of the 1930s might have been a political one; but Alfano's ties to Mussolini belie this naively romantic hypothesis. The libretto, which preserves much of Rostand's gorgeously ornate language, is by Henri Cain, a frequent librettist of Massenet's, whose texts include<i> Cendrillon, La Navarraise, </i>and <i>Don Quichotte</i>. For me, as an aficionado of the play, it is curious to hear a text with such strong rhythms, such strong music of its own, orchestrated for the opera stage. But the results are often strikingly poignant. One of the things I find most interesting about <i>Cyrano, </i>in fact, is how the music sometimes undermines the apparent optimism of the text. Trumpets promise discord and warlike tumult even as Cyrano and Christian, the piece's rival tenors, embrace for the first time. When the two men promise brotherhood, the orchestra foretells disaster.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/05/semi-scholarly-summary-cyrano-de.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-32576566874021501172017-04-30T23:21:00.000-04:002017-04-30T23:21:03.258-04:00Fritz Wunderlich sings Schlager<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Bio-W/Wunderlich-Fritz-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Bio-W/Wunderlich-Fritz-3.jpeg" height="320" width="226"></a><span style="text-align: left;">The new two-disc collection of Fritz Wunderlich's popular output from the 1950s and '60s is an impressive achievement on several levels. Put out by Naxos in collaboration with Südwest Rundfunk, it's a testimonial to skilled archival work -- in Mainz, Stuttgart, and Freiburg -- and skilled technological remastering. The sound quality is excellent, and it's nice to have a record of several </span><i style="text-align: left;">Unterhaltungsorchester</i><span style="text-align: left;">. It is also, of course, a testimony to Wunderlich's versatility as an artist. </span><span style="text-align: left;">In two ways, this collection is a document of what might have been. According to his daughter, quoted in the CD booklet, Wunderlich seriously considered embarking on a career as a popular singer; only a favorable audition outcome at a propitious moment secured him for the opera world. As this collection testifies, Wunderlich continued to record popular ballads with enthusiasm and skill. In its two hours -- and more! -- of high-quality recording, it is thus also a valuable document of a voice too little heard on the opera stage before Wunderlich's untimely death. </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">I might characterize the songs as belonging to three categories: sentimental love songs, sentimental regional odes, and sentimental Mediterranean exoticism. They're pleasant to a fault. Both in the repertoire and in my reception of it, there are similarities to Jonas Kaufmann's <a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/12/la-dolce-vita-with-jonas-kaufmann.html">recent excursion into Italian ballads</a>. What Kaufmann sings as "Parlami d'amore, Mariù," Wunderlich sings as "Sprich zu mir von Liebe, Mariù," but in both cases, I was left wishing to hear the tenor in rarities of the Italian repertoire. Wunderlich's musicianship is never less than polished and generous. More than once, I was left </span><span style="text-align: left;">whimpering with the desire to hear his Lohengrin. But the collection is worth listening to in its own right.</span></div>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/04/fritz-wunderlich-sings-schlager.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-19286229479121551542017-04-08T10:25:00.001-04:002017-04-08T10:25:31.506-04:00Mir Ist So Wunderbar: Fidelio at the Met<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It is well-documented that I love <i>Fidelio</i>. Inconsistently written and dramatically thin it may be, but it is also musically sublime, and its spare lines feel more plausible than many a fussier plot. I find its musical and dramatic structure -- moving from comedy to claustrophobia and back again -- compelling. And, not least, it can feel, psychologically, absolutely <i>right</i>, despite or through its melodrama. The musical and theatrical challenges of staging it, of course, are considerable, and the Met's current run satisfies the former better than the latter. The principals offered strong and emotionally nuanced singing. The production, however, balancing uneasily between artificiality and realism, appeared to lack a strong directorial hand governing the intense, complex, and potentially ambiguous relationships among the opera's characters. Crucially, the superb Met chorus was on excellent form, and the orchestra, under Sebastian Weigle, gave full honors to the gravitas of the score without letting it become ponderous.<br>
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Having seen Jürgen Flimm's 2000 production <a href="https://www.metoperashop.org/shop/fidelio-dvd-met-opera-8492?gclid=CODz36Ttk9MCFRtWDQod3KIAYw">on DVD</a>, I was frankly expecting to enjoy it more than I did. Some elements were both striking and effective: Rocco's tidy idyll of bourgeois domesticity existing opposite from and enabled by the cell block; the stack of prisoners' confiscated belongings consigned to the same subterranean space as Florestan. Also very poignant is the fact that when the 2nd Prisoner says "Wir sind belauscht mit Ohr und Blick!" he is referring to Fidelio's surveillance. But the crowded stage, and sometimes fussy stage business, too often works against emotional intimacy. Flimm's production seems to take the unfashionably sincere text about the power of love, etc., entirely at its word. (Parenthetically, why have I never seen an Old Hollywood production of <i>Fidelio, </i>using that instantly recognizable visual vocabulary of uncynical heroism? If anyone knows of one, please let me know in the comments.) A confusing exception was that Don Pizarro is beaten to death at the conclusion, albeit just off stage. If the bullying armies have merely passed from the command of one venal leader to another, what is the point? Intellectually, I don't mind a <i>Fidelio</i> production that reads against the text, and I enjoy abstract ones; but this moment of violence seemed inconsistent with the rest of the production. Moreover, I never felt that -- at least in this revival -- a stylistic balance between realism and theatricality was satisfactorily struck. Often, the characters declaim forthrightly to the audience their stifled passion, or their private fears, or their incandescent rage. In the case of Leonore especially, I felt that the ability to vent these dangerous feelings so easily, merely by facing the stage's fourth wall, rather undermined a sense of their explosive dramatic power.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/04/mir-ist-so-wunderbar-fidelio-at-met.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-50580953463036896742017-04-07T16:30:00.002-04:002017-04-07T16:31:43.300-04:00Carmen in Central PA: Kate Aldrich recital<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://katealdrich.com/">Kate Aldrich</a> giving a recital at a small college 3 miles from where I now live struck me as a miracle of the universe, an event against the laws of natural scheduling, a visitation which I was undisposed to question. I regret to say that, despite the recital's advertisement in symphony playbills and elsewhere, the residents of greater Harrisburg did not turn out in force. Aldrich, however, gave a generous and richly varied program, and engaged the small audience with great warmth. Not having heard Aldrich since her 2010 Met Carmen, I was pleased to get a sense both of the <i>bel canto</i> works she's been recently exploring, and the French romanticism into which, it seems, she is moving. And in one thing the provinces could give the audiences of New York an education: not once was there applause before the end of a set, nor did a single cell phone make itself heard. [Note: this recital took place on February 4th (sic!) and being unusually under academic deadlines, I neglected to give it its finishing touches till now. Gentle Readers, I beg your indulgence.]<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/04/carmen-in-central-pa-kate-aldrich.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-85675787579173186392017-02-02T08:42:00.000-05:002017-02-02T08:42:08.343-05:00Reading Round-Up: Beating the Winter Blues<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Winter and my dissertation revisions both seem endless at the moment, so my first Reading Roundup focuses on sensual poetry, superb pianism, and sexy mezzo singing.<br />
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<i>Definitely the Opera</i> is always worth reading, and the <a href="https://definitelytheopera.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/aosfebruary/">latest piece there</a> explores <i>Lieder</i>, language, and nineteenth-century musical interpretations of Sappho.<br />
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Because we all should think about Mitsuko Uchida more often, here's Boulezian's <a href="http://boulezian.blogspot.com/2017/02/uchida-mozart-and-schumann-31-january.html">thoughtful review</a> of her recent Mozart/Schumann concert.<br />
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Lastly, <a href="http://www.marienicolelemieux.com/en/home/">Marie-Nicole Lemieux</a> illuminated the ever-enigmatic Carmen in Paris, and Operatraveller <a href="https://operatraveller.com/2017/02/01/independent-woman-carmen-at-the-theatre-des-champs-elysees/">tells us about it</a>. I was pleased to hear that Michael Spyres made a convincing Don José at her side, since I haven't heard much of him since reviewing his <a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2012/12/michael-spyres-fool-for-love.html">calling-card album</a>, which I enjoyed.</div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-87903026372732475972017-01-27T12:36:00.002-05:002017-01-27T12:36:26.864-05:00Mozart with André Gide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's almost impossible to say that one time is more apt for another for listening to Mozart. But he may be especially welcome in times of uncertainty, such is the clarity of his music. In his operas, of course, his compassion for and insight into the human condition is on full display. In this week of his birthday, though, I've been listening to K. 537. I was led to it by André Gide, whose journals I've been reading. In the summer of 1940, he found himself possessed by "constant, latent sadness," but never slowed his intellectual or emotional engagement with the world around him. And in listening to Mozart, Gide wrote this:<div>
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J'ai le coeur tout remis en place et regonflé par l'admirable Concerto en ré majeur de Mozart admirablement interprété par Wanda Landowska, dont la radio vient de me permettre d'entendre l'enregistrement. Force et bonté, grâce, esprit et tendresse, rien ne manque à cette oeuvre (que je reconnais note à note), non plus qu'au jeu parfait de l'artiste, qu'un de mes regrets sera de n'avoir pas plus souvent entendue."</blockquote>
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</div></div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/01/mozart-with-andre-gide.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-46734098481353996472017-01-24T09:29:00.001-05:002017-01-24T09:29:08.333-05:00In the Stream of Life: Gerald Finley sings Sibelius<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLszDGC8N-JFE5x5g_VvPJ8cmzk2-RRMXBzirhyxfutdyfwRPx97fQ77ydB78PX1Le_v1K_ZKUH4JZHk9_dVVWIMR_B3aVCL1MUre2IpBuw-UDY6pCCGLkiDnyykQ5y3mRwB5FRdKgLelS/s1600/095115517826.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLszDGC8N-JFE5x5g_VvPJ8cmzk2-RRMXBzirhyxfutdyfwRPx97fQ77ydB78PX1Le_v1K_ZKUH4JZHk9_dVVWIMR_B3aVCL1MUre2IpBuw-UDY6pCCGLkiDnyykQ5y3mRwB5FRdKgLelS/s320/095115517826.jpg" width="320"></a></div>
I took up this CD with great eagerness, and I was still surprised by how good it is. Gerald Finley's <a href="http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=2242271">new disc</a> presents orchestrations of Sibelius' songs, focusing on a cycle of seven,<i> In the Stream of Life</i>, compiled from Sibelius' extensive song compositions, and orchestrated by none other than Einojuhani Rautavaara. That Finley's musicianship was superb throughout is hardly something that needs saying, but it is something that deserves emphasis. In a historical moment when, with some justice, sensationalist marketing strategies of opera singers are deplored, it is refreshing as well as exciting to be drawn in by Finley's unfussy, utterly mesmerizing singing. Especially in these gray winter days, it makes addictive listening.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2017/01/in-stream-of-life-gerald-finley-sings.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-36230302188991950422017-01-20T09:40:00.001-05:002017-01-24T15:12:09.414-05:00New Year's Resolutions (the Opera Obsession edition)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In place of my usual end-of-year round-up, I decided to declare New Year's Resolutions for this blog. That I'm only finalizing them now is indicative of how many things I'm juggling at the moment. I'm still in professional limbo and far from an opera house (alas!) Still, I enjoy this space and the discussions it starts, so here, Gentle Readers, are my resolutions, as an opera blogger without an opera house in 2017.<br />
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1. Continued CD reviews. Keeping up with new opera and recital releases is always a worthy resolve, I think... and it opens space for delightful discussions.<br />
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2. More Semi-Scholarly Summaries. I have long pondered how I can best blend my experience in doing historical research, and my obsession with opera. This kind of post seems like a good start.<br />
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3. Reading Roundups, in part because I don't read other opera blogs as regularly as I would like. I'd like to both read and share more thoughtful writing in the new year.<br />
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4. MetOnDemand Misc. Thanks to the generosity of the Beloved Flatmate (emerita) I have a MetOnDemand subscription! As I explore the service's impressive offerings, I plan to share highlights and possible reflections on the form of delivery.<br />
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5. Live events when possible... I have a ticket to an upcoming <a href="http://katealdrich.com/">Kate Aldrich</a> recital, so my year in music will be off to a good start.</div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-81541824204706999792016-12-22T09:43:00.003-05:002016-12-22T09:43:35.484-05:00La Dolce Vita with... Jonas Kaufmann?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goethe, with more brooding than this album provides (Tischbein, 1787)</td></tr>
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Germans have been semi-enviously fascinated by the land of lemon trees at least since Goethe, so in some ways, Jonas Kaufmann's latest album is unsurprising. He's been on record, since long before press tours were dreamt of, as enjoying Italy's music, language, and culture. So, sure: why not an album of popular song? It should be no surprise at all that Kaufmann's musicianship is never facile, or merely saccharine. He delivers complex lines of text and melody virtually without accompaniment. His voice not only caresses and croons, but sparks with anger, darkens with desire. Asher Fisch delivers deluxe accompaniment with the orchestra of the Teatro Massimo di Palermo. The melodies themselves may be predictable, but the orchestra is never less than attentive, and gives nuanced detail where it is possible to do so.<br>
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Once one gets beyond the cover design, with its font that could have been taken from a deliberately retro New York pizzeria, stereotype is less prevalent. Still, the album is not particularly adventurous. It doesn't explore uncharted territory. Reproaching any project for not doing something that it never set out to do may be a reviewer's cardinal error. But as a listener, I hope for more adventurous things from one of opera's biggest stars. It could be a great tool for opera evangelism. It makes great listening in the car, or while making dinner. Still. That Kaufmann is capable of melting sweetness, as in "Parlami d'amore, Mariù," is not, at this point, news. The same may even be said of twists of bitter irony, or almost savage resignation, as in the standards "Caruso" and "Core 'Ngrato." I did, of course, welcome these dark undertones in a repertoire usually marketed as the musical equivalent of sunshine and sparkling wine, both unlimited.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/12/la-dolce-vita-with-jonas-kaufmann.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-36932752714068429722016-12-02T23:02:00.002-05:002016-12-02T23:22:16.698-05:00What about Callas? Comparing Generations of Opera Singers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I may regret engaging with one of the opera world's most inflammatory questions, but it is one that has been nagging at my consciousness with increasing frequency -- and increasing insistence -- as I spend longer as an opera audience member. It is this: how do, or ought to, opera audiences discuss opera singers across time? The exigencies of musical performance, and of everything else contributing to an operatic career, mean that one operagoer usually hears several generations of opera singers within a lifetime. And to my great chagrin, this long and rich experience seems more often used to make categorical and usually negative statements than to share enthusiasm. As the very existence of this blog testifies, I'm passionately interested in contemporary and historical performance, and in analysis of what contributes to trends in that performance. And, combining indomitable optimism with scholarly zeal, I'm convinced that there must be a productive mode of performing oral histories of opera, that honors both musicians and the audiences who flock, with legendary and sometimes notorious devotion, to hear them.<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Callas as Tosca</td></tr>
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The anniversary of Callas' birth seems an appropriate time to flesh out my long-hoarded thoughts on this subject. For Maria Callas, of glorious memory, of eternally astonishing voice, is often cited as the paragon to crown all paragons. There's an astonishing variety of roles for which, in discussions of their performance history, her name is inevitably mentioned, in accents of hushed or ecstatic reverence. She is, for many, <i>the</i> diva, La Divina, <i>ne plus ultra</i>. I'm not exempt from the impulse to adore. Her <i>Tosca</i> was the first CD set I bought for myself, and others have joined it since (there's a fuller panegyric <a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2010/09/lamor-della-diva.html">here</a>.) In part, perhaps, because of her preternaturally polished off-stage glamour, Callas has come to be a potent and multivalent symbol. She is, sometimes, the essential Diva, the goddess, having become the perfect woman by her transcendence -- or transmutation? -- of female fickleness and frailty. She is, sometimes, the symbol of glories past, never to be attained by the present and degenerate generation. She is, sometimes, the incarnation of opera's astonishing ability to simultaneously surmount and express the anguish of the human condition.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/12/what-about-callas-comparing-generations.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-55194745604268105022016-11-01T21:46:00.000-04:002016-11-04T20:41:31.296-04:00O, nun waren wir Nacht-Geweihte! Tristan und Isolde at the Met<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Staging a perfect <i>Tristan </i>is one of opera's most notorious impossibilities. The Met has, to my mingled astonishment and gratitude, succeeded in staging one that is hair-raisingly good in musical terms, and that grapples passionately and intelligently with the dramatic tensions inherent in the work. Mariusz Treliński's production insists on superimposing the metaphorical and literal levels of <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>'s narrative, staging both reality and the lovers' perceptions of it. I thought this brought superb emotional payoff. In this of all works, it is--or should be--hard to separate discussion of the drama from discussion of the music. And the music-making of the performance I saw (the last of the run) was of a quality that leaves me, three days later, clutching handfuls of my hair like a parody of the shocked, enraptured, half-deranged 1865 audiences. The singers, led by Stuart Skelton's tragically dignified Tristan and Nina Stemme's incandescent Isolde, left me breathless. In the intervals, I kept incoherently trying to impress upon my mother, whose first live <i>Tristan</i> this was, how extraordinary it was to get a pair of lovers so well-matched, so vocally consistent and expressive over the course of the long evening. The orchestra, under Asher Fisch, conveyed the human and the superhuman.<br>
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While Treliński's production sometimes read against Wagner's text, it was very attentive to the music, to the setting of gestures and glances, movement and stillness. All three acts take place on the ship, lending additional tension to the artificially closed society of the plot, and additional poignancy to the lovers' desire to absorb the whole world into themselves. The world outside the ship may have been annihilated or simply deemed irrelevant; in any case, the ship is a successor to the mythical countries of medieval romance. <i>Wo sind wir?</i> Where are we? ask the lovers, and the question is never meant only literally. Tristan and Isolde are, of course, in separate compartments in Act I, he on the bridge and she in a cabin, but they both retreat to the lower stage left when overwhelmed and seeking privacy. It is in this same space that they will find their truest intimacy in Acts II and III. The video projections, designed by Bartek Macias, were the first I have seen in person that have made a substantive contribution to an opera production. Some complained about the repetitive nature of the images, but I took them as visual leitmotifs. The forest might be the forest in which Tristan's mother perishes, but it's also reminiscent of the films of Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, to say nothing of the many forests in which the quests of medieval romance take place. One of the most persistent images is of a radar screen: blank, seeking, reaching into the unknown. Sometimes this field is itself filled with memories and visions; in Act III, it is synchronized with the hospital machines that record the persistence of the life that Tristan tries to renounce, before at last being obliterated by waves and <i>Weltatem</i>.<br>
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I heard Asher Fisch conduct <i>Parsifal </i>three years ago, and Thursday's <i>Tristan</i> was no less impressive. Fisch led the orchestra in a performance that was daring both in scope and detail, charting a sure course from the first murmurs of the strings to the final, ecstatic hush. Fisch used dynamic variation and subtle shifts in tempi to great effect, drawing on the apparently inexhaustible resources of the Met's orchestra. To single out strings, brass, or woodwinds would be invidious; they were all excellent. It is the orchestra, after all, that must give voice to the lovers' speechlessness and that must echo their cries, that must give full expression to the meanings and implications of a libretto with vocabulary as limited and rich as that of liturgy or myth. All this they did. Each of the <i>Vorspiele </i>seemed a study in itself. I was also very impressed by the stage-pit coordination, precise enough that the turn of Tristan's head spoke volumes, even before <i>Was ist? Isolde?</i> and Marke broke my heart by extending his hand to his friend on that last, unbearable wail of the brass in Act II. I know I'm gushing, but I love this work, where metaphysical reflections vibrate in one's bones and blood.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/11/o-nun-waren-wir-nacht-geweihte-tristan.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-53092965588751378112016-10-16T17:19:00.000-04:002016-10-17T14:18:43.640-04:00Serpent and Fire: Anna Prohaska's Mythical Queens<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been fascinated with Anna Prohaska since <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqfp06MLbeM">this</a> came out several years ago. Her latest album, <i><a href="http://naxosdirect.com/items/serpent-fire-arias-for-dido-cleopatra-369355">Serpent and Fire</a></i>, displays a similar flair for the theatrical, and still more range of vocal color. The title alludes to two great queens of myth and history, Dido and Cleopatra; the disc explores how they were characterized on the operatic stage. I had never before considered the fact that these two larger-than-life figures proved so popular in early opera, and now I can't stop thinking about it (or listening to the CD.) The brief essay accompanying the disc--on the different operatic styles developing in the seventeenth century, and their different approaches to portraying the queens--argues that there is "nichts von das Ewig-Weibliche" in this popularity; this may be an excessively optimistic assessment. True, the queens are very different from each other. Moreover, as the disc showcases, the ways they were dramatically and vocally characterized could vary widely. Still, I find it suggestive that these two powerful and alluring queens of myth/history were so frequently staged at a time when state power, as embodied by the rulers of Europe, was threatened, redefined, and (to a considerable degree) gendered male. What did it mean to show these queens conquering and conquered? I've written elsewhere about the uses of <a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2011/08/mistress-queen-romantic-heroine-many.html">Anne Boleyn as romantic heroine</a>; it strikes me that a similar (more scholarly) investigation into these questions would be warranted. Prohaska's musical exploration is very welcome, covering three languages, two different settings of a Metastasio libretto, and showcasing her impressive range of vocal technique and emotional expression.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/10/serpent-and-fire-anna-prohaskas.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-37540304037644722022016-09-20T12:22:00.001-04:002016-09-20T12:22:56.563-04:00Operatic Ephemera: Tristan at the Met<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ4Qn61WTF2GzB-r1UjmF_S1etiv6si3JGMARNtbZRh0bczgXi2YbFiFwTUeH6D8928MRAWbBIO10F0JVYbedrN37Llnvx_W4wxbur0ZQ3hMMgTK78Vp-U8CcKDFRjspUSJG8shif_I1uN/s1600/IMG_2218.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ4Qn61WTF2GzB-r1UjmF_S1etiv6si3JGMARNtbZRh0bczgXi2YbFiFwTUeH6D8928MRAWbBIO10F0JVYbedrN37Llnvx_W4wxbur0ZQ3hMMgTK78Vp-U8CcKDFRjspUSJG8shif_I1uN/s320/IMG_2218.JPG" width="240"></a>In about a month's time, I will see the Met's new <i>Tristan und Isolde</i> with my mother (her conversion from opera-skeptic to budding Wagnerite is chronicled <a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2011/05/being-turned-on-by-opera-die-walkure-my.html">here</a>.) We're both very excited. After I described the plot to her, she said she thought she'd like to look at the words, and asked if they were printed anywhere. I joyfully assured her that they were, and promised to lend her my libretto. In digging it out of my untidy collection, I discovered that I own not the modern <a href="http://amzn.to/2cR8jZY">red-and-white edition</a>, but something far more interesting: this fabulous artifact. It includes a full-page endorsement of Knabe pianos by <a href="http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100110393">Göta Ljungberg</a>, and a deliberately archaic English translation, oddly sprinkled with pseudo-medievalism. ("O, er weiss wohl warum!" becomes "Oh! he wots well the cause.") The missteps may be many, but Isolde's contemplation of the waves in the Liebestod, asking "Shall I sip them, / dive within them, / to my panting / breathing win them?" struck me as surprisingly effective in its ecstatic eroticism.<br>
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The libretto also includes an "extra": a piano version of the Liebesnacht! I was fascinated by this, richly evocative of an audience expected to have the skills and desire to take the music home with them in this way, whether to an upright piano in a corner or to a far grander instrument and leisure to play it in. But even more interesting to me was the note by the libretto's first owner: "March 16, 1934 -- At the Metropolitan with my most beloved cousin -- The greatest performance -- Tristan + Isolde / Henry + Julie Grün."<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/09/operatic-ephemera-tristan-at-met.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-71600565858167676762016-09-11T16:05:00.000-04:002016-09-12T14:28:38.723-04:00Allegro io son: Brownlee's bel canto<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As this blog makes clear, I'm usually more likely to be attracted by records involving German orchestration and unfulfilled longing than by cheerfully-titled discs of <i>bel canto</i>. The artistry of Lawrence Brownlee, though, drew me to his new album of Bellini and Donizetti, <i><a href="https://delosmusic.com/recording/lawrence-brownlee-bel-canto-allegro/">Allegro io son</a></i>, and I've been listening to it repeatedly. It's a thoughtfully put-together disc, and one that admirably showcases not only the versatility of the composers, but Brownlee's own remarkable vocal and emotional range as an artist. Both his talent and his generosity as a performer are richly displayed. The Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and the Kaunas State Choir, sensitively led by Constantine Orbelian, provide support of high quality.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/09/allegro-io-son-brownlees-bel-canto.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-70167067211149057772016-09-04T22:30:00.000-04:002016-09-05T15:08:20.012-04:00Aimez-vous Brahms? Chants d'amour / Liebeslieder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Summer weather is beginning to transition into that of fall, which means it's time for me to transition from French to German art songs as my default listening of choice. Perfect for this lazy, enchanted, in-between period has proved a new recording of Brahms waltzes, here identified as <i><a href="http://naxosdirect.com/items/brahms-18-liebeslieder-waltzes-366604">Chants d'Amour</a></i>. Inexplicably, I have struggled in the past to come to grips with the <i>Liebeslieder Walzer</i>, but this rendition was light and seductive, yet not without its core of seriousness and melancholy. (If a song cycle doesn't have a core of melancholy, I'm rarely interested.) Here, Op. 52 and Op. 65 bracketed the four-hand waltzes of Op. 39. It doesn't feel overstuffed or overlong as an album; tempi are often faster than I've heard elsewhere, without feeling rushed. I found the collaboration of the musicians impressive throughout.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/09/brahms-chants-damour-liebeslieder.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-74767383768735346122016-08-21T14:11:00.002-04:002016-08-21T14:11:49.876-04:00Embarras de richesses: Frederica von Stade collection<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It is both a privilege and a considerable challenge to review the recently-released collection of Frederica von Stade's <a href="https://www.sonymusic.pl/albumy/frederica-von-stade-the-complete-rca-and-columbia-recital-albums">complete Columbia recital recordings</a>. Yes, all of them! This is truly an <i>embarras de richesses</i>, and a deeply impressive testimony to the breadth of von Stade's artistry. While only a fraction of <a href="http://www.fredericavonstade.com/fulldiscography.html">her discography</a>, it's a delightful cross-section of it.<br>
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Accompanying the CDs is a booklet with comprehensive track lists that also features specifications of which LPs the CDs were adapted from. Almost always, these are 1 to 1 transfers, which should make it particularly easy for the long-time aficionado to determine what's included. This also ensures a lack of lazy duplication. There are two compilation CDs, one of excerpts from full recordings of Massenet and Monteverdi--perhaps particularly valuable for those with great enthusiasm but limited shelf space--and one of collaborations, featuring, delightfully, some of the genre-blending work of contemporary composers. Another feature I really enjoyed was that the original LP jacket art (with commentary) is reproduced on the CD sleeves, offering a fascinating historical window on how these albums were first presented. They also offer a remarkable tour of the soft-focus photography popular across musical genres in the '70s and '80s. The most recent inclusion, a 2000 recording of Richard Danielpour's <i>Elegies</i> and Rilke settings, also featuring Thomas Hampson, was very welcome, and it seemed only appropriate to honor Von Stade's commitment to contemporary work.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/08/embarras-de-richesses-frederica-von.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-70799456242598714212016-07-30T11:31:00.002-04:002016-07-30T11:31:25.343-04:00Carmen: NYCO woos an audience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bryant Park, now featuring opera</td></tr>
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New York is a city I still think of as home, and not least among the many things I miss about it is its operatic ecosystem. So it was a special pleasure, on my latest visit, to find opera right in my academic backyard. The much-tried NYCO is currently trying out free outdoor opera. The large, diverse, and multigenerational audience that gathered last evening in Bryant Park would seem to confirm the wisdom of the strategy. I was encouraged to see how ready such an audience was to devote part of a summer evening to opera. The offered <i>Carmen</i> turned out to be a much-reduced version of Bizet's big, brutal, beautiful work. In scarcely more than an hour we were through, famous excerpts having been strung together with summarizing narrative. I expect that the <a href="https://nycopera.com/parks/">next planned park opera</a>, <i>Pagliacci</i>, will be much more successful in offering a taste of opera, since the company will be able to offer the whole work. And of all the scores to put in piano reduction, that of <i>Carmen</i> is surely one of those that must suffer the most from losing its color, its noise, and its vital pacing. I still enjoyed the opportunity to hear more of NYC's singers.<br>
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</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/07/carmen-nyco-woos-audience.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-73538489337754992602016-07-21T15:37:00.001-04:002016-07-21T17:23:14.625-04:00Interval Adventures: L'Opéra Garnier<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Palais Garnier</td></tr>
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Academic travels have taken me to Paris; this loveliest of cities doesn't currently have opera to see, but it does, of course, have what may be the world's most opulent opera house. I was happy to discover that the <a href="https://www.operadeparis.fr/visites/palais-garnier">Opéra Garnier</a> makes a good destination for the opera-loving tourist. Its Second Empire splendors are impressive in their own right... and this is an understatement; they are overwhelming, and intended to be so. Still, many of its pleasures, at least for me, come from the fact that it has such rich historical and literary resonances. As the home of the Paris Opera, it has inherited and preserved the holdings of the opera's earlier architectural incarnations. It's easy (if slightly anachronistic) to imagine the Count of Monte Cristo in one of the boxes; Dumas' mysterious protagonist loved the opera, particularly <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXKTyM5ZXgs">Guillaume Tell</a></i>. The opera house itself, famously (or infamously, perhaps) becomes a protagonist itself in Gaston Leroux' extraordinary fantasy of fin-de-siècle decadence. Today, the house offers pleasures both scholarly and frivolous.<br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKVNZmf3ZXe04Jt1VchRxGC-cFfXwCwIWB2idaT9ZW0nP4FYeH4Cjh27iy28wfmrRyNhz-Xukkzrg3Pn3ICrh5FJUZtEvM7mXnKQdRfeN8H3DWQ5q-KaAf8gNzgIF-7GqZNe1jkF1eFiaD/s1600/IMG_2094.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKVNZmf3ZXe04Jt1VchRxGC-cFfXwCwIWB2idaT9ZW0nP4FYeH4Cjh27iy28wfmrRyNhz-Xukkzrg3Pn3ICrh5FJUZtEvM7mXnKQdRfeN8H3DWQ5q-KaAf8gNzgIF-7GqZNe1jkF1eFiaD/s320/IMG_2094.JPG" width="240"></a>Notable opera composers are quasi-ubiquitous within the house; Gluck and other luminaries of the French baroque welcome hypothetical opera-goers in the foyer (this isn't where one enters as one of hoi polloi getting a ticket to see the house alone, but you can and perhaps should go around and imagine yourself sweeping up the staircase.) The staircase is, of course, a wonder to behold. It is so entirely unrestrained, so much an apotheosis of its type, that I succumbed to it entirely.<br>
</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/07/interval-adventures-lopera-garnier.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2665236978084294968.post-67592432795405143252016-07-18T09:50:00.002-04:002016-07-18T09:50:25.766-04:00Madness in Great Ones: Bryn Terfel's Boris at the Proms<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Terfel as Tsar: Boris Godunov at the London Proms</td></tr>
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It was due to<a href="https://twitter.com/TheRoyalOpera/status/754362169840459776"> a timely Tweet</a> from the Royal Opera that I found myself, on Saturday night, happily making part of the throng in the arena of the Royal Albert Hall, eager to see the grand spectacle of Mussorgsky's <i>Boris Godunov</i> distilled into a semi-staged performance. It's impressive to me, incidentally, that the turnout was so good; I was able to get a last-minute ticket, but still: two hours of Russian is two hours of Russian. I was fascinated by it. Not only did the evening provide a chance to hear Mussorgsky's score without the posthumous fillings-out and fillings-in that have become usual to it, but it provided me with my first live hearing of Antonio Pappano's conducting, and renewed proof that Bryn Terfel is one of the finest stage actors in opera.<br>
</div><a href="http://operaobsession.blogspot.com/2016/07/madness-in-great-ones-bryn-terfels.html#more">Read more »</a>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02549302523503271428noreply@blogger.com3