Fin ch'han dal vino: Don Giovanni with the New York Opera Exchange

Don Giovanni in 1963

The New York Opera Exchange has followed up their inaugural season's Cosi fan tutte with another production of a Mozart/Da Ponte opera commenting on American iniquity. I saw Wednesday's opening night performance of a Don Giovanni set in the nation's capital in a fictionalized 1963. Jennifer Shorstein's minimalist production provided a dark commentary on the amnesties granted by privilege of office in an ostensible meritocracy, and on the personal tragedies created by a society floundering under the burden of hypocritical standards. This production, focusing on oppression based on class and gender, rewrites history: the all-male cliques of licit and illicit power--Don Giovanni is a politician, the Commendatore a mafia boss--are multiracial. While the female members of the chorus are given merely decorative functions--in which they compete and express gratitude for male attention--the three principal women are given distinctive motivations for their social and sexual agency. Against the libretto, Donna Anna is presented as giving her consent to Don Giovanni, but outraged and frightened by his failure to fulfill the terms of the social contract as she sees it by entering into a permanent and licit relationship with her. Zerlina, in one of the production's intelligent touches, seems to feel an obligation to live up to the doctrine of free love in "La ci darem," but soon decides that her own free choice lies with Masetto alone. Donna Elvira is not a proud aristocrat, but a woman who, pathetically, pitiably, clings to Don Giovanni as a possible liberator. Her only social resources are a clinging dress and cheap lipstick, and she is destroyed by the society that has created her. And it is this society which is victorious: Don Giovanni is an abuser of power, but not an anarchist, and he is slain by the successor of the crime lord whom he murders. The cycle of cold-blooded violence continues.

The orchestra was a newly formed ensemble, and showed considerably improved cohesion over last year's showing, although there were issues in coordination with the singers. This I'm inclined to attribute to the inflexibility of conductor David Leibowitz's tempi. Balance issues in the first act were largely corrected in the second. The strings were occasionally imprecise but acquitted themselves well; the woodwinds performed with some distinction. The horns did well until the final scene, when disaster struck: the Commendatore was heralded with bizarre cacophonies. Fortunately, matters were set right for the final ensemble.

Song of Norway: Grieg goes Broadway-style

Danieley, Silber, and Fontana sing of Norway. Photo (c) Erin Baiano

On Tuesday night, the eve of May, the Collegiate Chorale presented an appropriately romantic extravaganza at Carnegie Hall. The 1944 Song of Norway was the brainchild of Robert Wright and George Forrest, also responsible for the later and more famous The Great Waltz and Kismet. Commissioned as a light opera, Song of Norway was here presented as a musical, but a happily hybrid one, its material based on the music and life of Edvard Grieg. Melodramatic episodes are heaped with indiscriminate zeal onto a slight plot, but the show boasts considerable charm nonetheless. Dramatic chemistry was intermittent on the night (many of the singers glued to their scores) but the musical values were solid and I enjoyed myself along with the rest of the audience. The American Symphony Orchestra played well under the baton of Ted Sperling, treating sentimental crescendos and sprightly folk rhythms with a schmaltzy sincerity which would have done an MGM extravaganza proud. The ballet artists of the Tom Gold Dance Company credit for doing their best in a constrained space with limited choreography. The Collegiate Chorale was on superb form. As a multifunctional vox populi and provider of sound effects, they sang with good diction and smooth sound, performing their various dramatic functions creditably.

Ich sei das Weib! Goerke and the Greenwich Village Orchestra

Christine Goerke. Photo via IMG Artists

A non-professional orchestra and an international soprano might sound like strange bedfellows, but in Sunday's concert of Wagner selections, Christine Goerke and the Greenwich Village Orchestra proved to have a partnership with admirable chemistry. I jumped at the chance to hear Goerke, whom I hadn't encountered live since her Norma in Philadelphia in 2008, and whom New York audiences will next hear as the Dyer's Wife in the Met's Die Frau Ohne Schatten next season. The orchestra proved to be a polished as well as passionate ensemble, a charming reminder of the days when enthusiasts themselves, and not only their stereo sets, were responsible for reproducing the beloved music of the operatic stage. If the strings occasionally lacked in precision or the woodwinds in finesse, it was still a very creditable performance under the baton of Pierre Vallet, who led crisply and cleanly.

The Tannhäuser overture and bacchanal saw the orchestra at its finest, with each theme given dramatic value, and with sprightliness leavening the pseudo-medieval pomp and ceremony. When Goerke entered, she lit up the hall, embracing its dingy neoclassicism in an expression of radiant joy before launching into "Dich, teure Halle." Elisabeth's effervescent happiness filled Goerke's sound as her sound filled the hall. German nerd that I am, I loved the expression which Goerke gave to text. The very strength of her rich sound seemed almost to work against the desolation of "Allmächt'ge Jungfrau," but perhaps I have insufficient sympathy with Elisabeth's self-denying selflessness. Certainly Goerke sang it beautifully. I was delighted that the GVO gave this aria its response, Wolfram's achingly beautiful "O du mein holder Abendstern." Jesse Blumberg sang it with a resonant, warm baritone well-suited to it. I found myself wishing that the legato phrases had been taken more slowly, and that Blumberg's perfectly correct German had perhaps been invested with more poignancy, but judging by aufience response, these reservations placed me in a minority.

And the dark became desire: Renée Fleming and the NYPhil at Carnegie Hall

The centerpiece of Friday evening's Carnegie Hall concert was unquestionably Anders Hillborg's The Strand Settings, a song cycle commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for Renée Fleming, and receiving its world premiere. Just as unquestionably, the occasion was an event: the buzz of audience chatter proclaimed eager anticipation in several languages. The performance, in its energy and subtlety, gratified this anticipation not only in the haunting, lapidary lieder, but in surprisingly nuanced and insightful accounts of two repertory staples. The programming of Respighi's Fountains of Rome and the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition alongside Hillborg's work helped me hear each of the familiar works differently.

Giulio Cesare: Dà pace all'armi!

David McVicar presents Handel's Giulio Cesare as a witty, knowing fable about imperialist projects giving way to cooperation based on mutual respect between individuals and cultures. At least, this is how I read it, and I believe such a reading is supported by the highlighting of Handel's oft-reiterated motif of the conquered conquering. The theatrical exuberance of the production, mingling styles of stagecraft, costume, and choreography from different eras and cultures, is winsome, although I found the comedy occasionally broad for my taste. There is substance as well as style: Caesar gets a veranda of power, and the abundant divans and draperies are definitely modeled on Ingres rather than India itself, let alone Egypt. There is, to be sure, a suggestion of dysfunctional realities under the bright surface.  Caesar's military presence steadily grows on the glittering sea, and Sesto is very nearly destroyed by the hollow corruption of the military ethos he embraces in his pursuit of vengeance. Still--a fable this remains, with men and women, the dead and the living, the rulers and ruled, all united in the final tableau. Harry Bicket, with impressive energy and good humor, led the Met orchestra from the podium and the harpsichord. Subtle shifts in tempo and dynamics shifts were used well, I thought, to chart the characters'--and the drama's!--changes in mood. A curious lack of chemistry between the singers subdued the energy of the evening despite accomplished performances, but I found the evening nevertheless enjoyable.

Interval Adventures: Visiting Verdi Square

Thanks to Italian-American philanthropy of the early twentieth century, Papa Verdi has a square named after him and a statue in his honor at 72nd Street. Subway commuters and park bench occupants usually seem surprised when I stand still to admire it, but since it's a short walk from the Met, I do so fairly often. As can be seen in the righthand photo above, it is in the grandest tradition of monumental nineteenth-century sculpture. If Verdi were on his plinth surrounded by lyres alone, I'd find it far less interesting... but what gives it its charm, in my opinion, are the figures surrounding Verdi. Grouped around the benevolent master are four of his characters. Whether they seem to be immersed in their own narratives or doing affectionate homage may depend on the angle of light, or one's point of view. The vividness of their expressions makes me hope that the sculptor was an admirer of the composer and his wonderfully human creations. One of the reasons that I keep returning to the sculpture, though, is that I'm still in some doubt about the identity of the statue at the back of Verdi's column; perhaps you, Gentle Readers, can help clarify the matter.

I Lombardi alla prima crociata: o nuovo incanto

The Siege of Jerusalem, 1099
(from a 12th-century chronicle)

Verdi's fourth opera, written when he was 29 years old, was penned at a time when Meyerbeer's grand operas were beginning to dominate the opera stage, and when resistance to foreign occupation was beginning to dominate Italy's political stage. Both influences are apparent in I Lombardi alla prima crociata, which the composer makes far more interesting and nuanced than Temistocle Solera's libretto, based on an epic poem (!), gives it any right to be. The most striking anachronism of Verdi's opera is its most conspicuous: there was no single word for crusade at the time of the first or indeed the second strange, sweeping, composite movements which would become known by that name (and under that name famously condemned by Steven Runciman as "one long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.") The libretto for I Lombardi acknowledges the spirit of pilgrimage and the mixed gender of the European hosts; it also, however, claims a mercenary motive which recent historians have noted was implausible in view of the extreme expense and danger involved. Mortgages and wasting fevers were well-known hazards to the Lombard and Frankish hosts, and yet they journeyed to what they called "Christ's land," determined to possess and administer it as faithful vassals of the Lord of Lords. Verdi's music is alert both to the poignancy of pilgrim aspiration, and to the deep tragedy of the perversion of that aspiration into bloodthirstiness. The lovers Oronte and Giselda, often in text he gave them himself, are aware of the contradictions in so-called holy violence: Oronte is convinced of the truth of Giselda's faith because of her own patience and generosity of spirit. In the tremendous finale of the second act, Giselda inverts the cry of the crusaders in screaming against her father's bloodshed: "God does not will this." Michael Fabiano and Angela Meade gave impressive performances in these crucial roles, at the heart of a gratifyingly tight performance from the Opera Orchestra of New York under their respected director Eve Queler.