Reading Round-Up: Beating the Winter Blues

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.

Definitely the Opera is always worth reading, and the latest piece there explores Lieder, language, and nineteenth-century musical interpretations of Sappho.

Because we all should think about Mitsuko Uchida more often, here's Boulezian's thoughtful review of her recent Mozart/Schumann concert.

Lastly, Marie-Nicole Lemieux illuminated the ever-enigmatic Carmen in Paris, and Operatraveller tells us about it. 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 calling-card album, which I enjoyed.

Carmen: NYCO woos an audience

Bryant Park, now featuring opera

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 Carmen 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 next planned park opera, Pagliacci, 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 Carmen 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.

U-Carmen: Bizet in South Africa

The vibrant, award-winning film U-Carmen eKhayelitsha was released in 2005, but it was a recent and welcome discovery to me (through Netflix's streaming services, of all things.) Directed by Mark Dornford-May, the film is adapted (or, better, transladapted) from Bizet's Carmen, reconfiguring the drama and the music to provide, as Bizet did, a gripping tale that balances between exoticism and realism, mixing gritty quotidian detail with gestures of startling romanticism. The fateful events play out in a suburb of Cape Town, where Carmen enjoys solidarity with the community of cigarette-rollers and marketplace traders, where she can easily disappear in dirt lanes between tin-sided houses to escape the pursuit of the urban police. The setting of urban and suburban South Africa in the late twentieth century is given far more specificity than Bizet's Seville was. Although occasionally self-conscious and semi-guilty about my fascination with the camera's dwelling on unfamiliar landscapes--long stretches of highway through near-desert, bright fabrics on laundry lines--I enjoyed frankly the sensitive delineation of social and religious dynamics in the community where the narrative unfolds.

Elina, Karel, and Carmen

The pavements of the Bronx are icy, and I'm holed up getting work done instead of going to the opera.  But before this blog resumes its regular programming next week, here's a tidbit to warm you in wintriest weather.  In the two performances I've heard her in, Elina Garanca has wowed me with her vocal talent and ability, and left me wishing there were more apparent connection between her voice and the drama of the music she sings.  Here she is, in a 2006 concert, singing "Les tringles des sistres tintaient."  Her husband, Karel Mark Chichon, is on the podium.  If you can't see the entire frame of this video in the blog, click through to YouTube so that you can.


Cold is the last word I'd use.  Am I imagining things?  Is this hometown crowd magic? Should the opera houses of the world be asking for more of the Garanca-Chichon couple at the same time?

S'il y a des sorcières...

I decided to take refuge from NYC's winter rains in sunny Seville, and headed down to see Elina Garanca's polarizing Carmen on Tuesday evening.  I'm glad I did: she has a vocally superb Carmen ("Duh!" you may exclaim, Gentle Readers; and you are right to do so, given the reactions of the international press.  Still, I was genuinely surprised by just how good she was.)  Furthermore, I feel as though she also has a fascinating Carmen just waiting to break free.  There are more details on Richard Eyre's production in my review of the performance I saw last season, with a different cast, than I'll include here.  Although it's fair to say that Eyre could have exploited and explored the 1930s setting of his Carmen more, the production stood up very well for me in this second viewing.  The action flows well, there's a clear point of view on Carmen's world, it can comfortably house a variety of different interpretative choices, and caricature is avoided.

Tu es le diable, Carmen!

I learned something last night: Carmen is a popular opera. Yes, I knew this at some level, but showing up more than four hours before the release of rush tickets to find oneself behind 120 other people does rather drive it home. (Not to mention mercifully-abortive manifestations of rhythmic applause, and even Toreador-humming, during the performance. Oh dear, I'm turning into an elitist. Sorry.) I would be remiss in opening my account of this much-anticipated event without an "Euch werde Lohn" for the charming Zerbinetta due to whose kind offices and timelier arrival I was able to be present at all! Ich kann sie nicht vergelten! (For a probably more-sophisticated review, head to her blog.)

Bizet's superb music, of course, is always a treat, and the orchestra under Alain Altinoglu played with increasing verve from Act II onwards. While I had some quibbles with the Richard Eyre production (images, with the season's first cast, may be found here) I will say that having a fairly clear concept working throughout is no small thing. The sets were massive, dwarfing, and seeming to at times cramp, the singers; the world of this Carmen was dirty, sensual, and brutal. In Act I, the monstrously ineffective garrison, at the front of the stage, was separated from the population they were nominally policing by a chicken-wire fence, and when they did emerge, could not even execute the changing of the guard without being disrupted by the chorus of urchins. What did they do with their time? Grope nice girls like Micaela and ogle the factory workers, obviously. Lillas Pastia had an appropriately dingy interior, curiously open to the sky, with a dais for all that gypsy dancing. More monumental stone indicated Smuggling in the Mountains, and Act IV, of course, took place in the shadow of the enormous arena. The atmospheric colored lighting worked well, I thought, and the balletic intervals before Acts I and III were interesting, if not breathtaking. Altogether, while not entirely won over by the production (why, for instance, is the cigarette factory under the stage? and must we use turntables so much? must we?) I was impressed with Eyre's efforts to support and comment on the drama. Doom, I must say, was impending from the first opening of the scarlet-slashed curtain, the production itself as fatalistic as Carmen: out of such an environment, it seems to suggest, there is no other possible outcome.

Egli muore! o, ciel, ei muore!

Last Sunday, as posters around the city and banners on websites insistently reminded me, the Oscars were awarded. In theory (leaving aside the probably disheartening answer of how the system of nomination actually works) this celebrates Excellence in Film Generally. And I have a confession: besides Cinematography, the acting categories are usually the only ones--if any--that really arouse my partisanship. (Related confession: I don't see many films, because if I have a choice between spending $12 on a film and $20 on an opera...!) And all this is leading up to something: what about acting in opera?