Great Voices Sing John Denver

Placido Domingo & John Denver, ca. 1980

I associate John Denver with road trips: rolled down windows, long ribbons of asphalt, and a carful of untrained singers happily caroling "Take me home, country roads." I think of his singing as characterized by a simplicity redeeming a sentimentality that might otherwise seem oppressively earnest. The project of having opera singers interpret these open-air ballads was one I viewed with intense if somewhat skeptical curiosity. The undertaking was the brainchild of Denver's arrangers, and facilitated by the considerable influence of Placido Domingo (more details here.) I couldn't resist the opportunity to review the resulting album, especially since I'm currently staying with my mother, whose adolescence coincided with Denver's heyday, and who therefore led Denver sing-alongs on road trips. Her enthusiasm for the project was great; and so I undertook my critical listening with her helpfully at hand as a one-woman control group for my bias towards loved singers and potential indifference to Denver's lyrics. The album's attempt to find a meeting ground for Denver's music and operatic voices met with decidedly mixed results. Too many of the arrangements were dominated by sentimental strings wallowing in the predictable harmonies common to many classical crossover or pseudo-classical albums. I thought that allowing the participating artists to cross further over into Denver's musical language--or, indeed, simply a greater variety in the arrangements--would have been, on the whole, more felicitous. On the whole, I'm inclined to regard the disc more as a curious conversation piece than anything else, but my mother enjoyed listening to it enormously (including the heckling of misfires), leading me to the conclusion that it may be more successful with John Denver fans than diehard opera lovers, for situations where those two categories don't overlap.

Owen Wingrave: You forget, you are the enemy too

Finley and Savidge: debating duty

Owen Wingrave may suffer by comparison with Britten's other operas, but it's still, to my mind, a stimulating piece, with exciting vocal writing, some specially beautiful music for its baritone hero, and a drama both moody and poignant. The novella by Henry James is largely expository in its treatment of a warlike family's conflict with last scion, as he turns his back on battlefields. James speaks of their old house as imbued with a "sense of bereavement and mourning and memory, of names never mentioned of the far-away plaint of widows and the echoes of battles and bad news. It was all military indeed, and Mr Coyle was made to shudder a little at the profession of which he helped to open the door to harmless young men." Wingrave is "almost cursed" with a sense of proportion more accurate than his family's.

The Arthaus DVD released earlier this year is of a 2001 for-television production: strangely, it seemed not quite formatted for square home screens. (More background on the 1971 work may be found here; original broadcast here.) Over forty years after the work's premiere, the idea of writing an opera for television still seems rather like a media experiment which might be productively repeated. The disc is mostly frill-less (and though there were credits for titles designers, I couldn't see that subtitling was an option) but it does include an hour-long documentary. I know comparatively little about Britten's biography, so enjoyed it thoroughly and without the ability to assess what elisions or overbold interpretative strokes may have undermined its accuracy or orthodoxy. Perhaps it was the fault of the screen I watched it on that no names for the interviewees appeared. It incorporates delightful footage, from rehearsals (numerous) to home footage of recorder-playing and playing with dogs in the backyard. It makes no mention of Owen Wingrave itself, however, despite the fact that the opera, to a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, focuses the narrative on the problem of the individual against and within society (unsurprising to those who know, or even know of Peter Grimes.)

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.

La hija de Rappaccini: Opera in the Garden of Good and Evil

Elaine Alvarez as Rappacini's Daughter
(c) Gotham Chamber Opera/Richard Termine

Gotham Chamber Opera has made a specialty of presenting unusual opera in unconventional spaces. Their production of Daniel Catán's early work, La hija de Rappaccini, creatively uses modest resources in the luxurious setting of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The libretto is both more profound and more enigmatic than the Hawthorne story that forms its original source material. Juan Tovar, working from material by Octavio Paz, crafts an elliptical parable about humanity and nature, about humanity and the divine, which asks at least as many questions as it answers. The biblical imagery in which it is steeped was not always reflected in the surtitles. The last thing we need may be one more operatic heroine whose "tragedy is also her transcendence," to quote Gregory Moomjy's program note, but the eponymous Beatriz possesses a dignity and clear-eyed wisdom which are at least some consolation. This run of performances is given in a reduced orchestration by the composer of his 1988 opera.. Two pianos, timpani, and harp create an eerie soundscape, their knowledge of events and emotions often preceding that of the characters. The characterization through the score is also very strong, and as the passions of the principals set them on a collision course, the orchestra expresses their doom and sympathy with their doom. Gotham's musicians (including Andrea Puente Catán on the harp) were led by Neal Goren in a strongly atmospheric performance.

¡Figaro! Morningside's Mozartean morality play

Susanna and Figaro discuss the future
Photo (c) Karen Almond/Morningside Opera

 Morningside Opera is currently performing a run of ¡Figaro! (90210), an opera consisting of a rearrangement of Mozart's Nozze score to a libretto by Vid Guerrerio based on Da Ponte's. Guerrerio's vision for the updated plot results in substantial cuts, an addition (fleshing out Cherubino and Barbarina's relationship) and some reordering. Its earnest determination to comment on and satirize the opera's themes of class conflict and exploitation (and friction between genders and between generations) leaves less space than the original for whimsy and for psychological development. The libretto is often clever, and sometimes incisive, especially in Figaro's music (the critique of unbridled capitalism and white privilege in "Aprite un po' quegli occhi" is nothing less than brilliant.) To my mind, however, it was somewhat overladen, making it a little less than the sum of its parts. Still, it's an interesting experiment in what seems to be a growing trend of transladaptation (compare a Toronto take on Nozze, or Peter Brook's truly magical Flute.) In this performance, the score was arranged for string quintet and piano with surprising success. Music director Raphael Fusco led from the piano, and the phrasing and internal contrast between the instruments were both handled admirably. The cast of singers had good rapport with each other, and turned in a creditable collective performance, with Carlos Monzon a standout as the charismatic Figaro.

Love is stronger than war: Branagh's Magic Flute

Revising history: now with more Mozart

While I like Kenneth Branagh as a director, love Mozart (obviously,) and have a thing for First World War dramas, I wasn't sure what to expect of the confluence of these three in Branagh's 2006 film of The Magic Flute. Frankly, I was a bit dubious as to how the unwieldy drama and sublime music would be adapted to an alternate history of the Western Front; but in the event, I was won over. The film is unapologetically whimsical, even absurd (to an extent I haven't seen Branagh indulge as a director since Dead Again; here its sheer exuberance recalls Buster Keaton routines.) It's also, however, tender and thoughtful; it doesn't confront very seriously or for very long the historical horrors on which it's loosely based, but this is because of its irresistible sincerity of belief in the fact that love does, in fact, conquer all. In Sarastro's vision, there might just be a way to break the cycle of "war to end all wars," and make peace. That this is Sarastro's vision is not at first clear--one of the things I liked most about the production is that it kept me actually guessing as to the characters' motives, and as to what would actually happen to them. Stephen Fry's transladaptation (to borrow a term from Definitely the Opera) of the libretto is sly and sure-handed, eliminating much of the racism and misogyny while cleaving closely to the German vowel sounds, and the musical values are solid. James Conlon leads the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in a lively and nuanced account of the score, sensitive to the emotional journeys of the characters. (There are some cuts, but the only substantial ones to the spoken dialogue.) Joseph Kaiser's Tamino (more likable than most within the first 60 seconds) and René Pape's Sarastro were vocal and dramatic standouts, but the singing was fine all around. I don't mean this as damning with faint praise; on my home speakers, the recording had a tendency to flatten singers' sound, so it was difficult to evaluate the sound they were actually producing. Still, the singing was on the whole musically intelligent, as was (notably and commendably!) the direction. The way the film was shot was itself interesting, with creative camera angles and color palettes, and also related well to the music, I thought (if occasionally succumbing to literalism.) Opera and film being vastly different art forms to begin with, I thought Branagh's gleeful creativity with the latter medium provided a good argument for adapting the former to it. Affection for both Mozart's opera and the possibilities of film animates the endeavor, which I found unexpectedly winsome and touching. The network of theaters screening opera opened the way for its belated U.S. premiere; for showings go here.

Vieni fuori: Dallapiccola's Prigioniero with the NYPhil

I went to Saturday's concert with the New York Philharmonic for the sake of Luigi Dallapiccola's rarely performed Il Prigioniero, but ended up being entranced by the Prokoviev violin concerto which preceded it, as well.  Alan Gilbert and his orchestra were on very fine form. The degree of subtlety which they achieved in the concerto, and the sheer variety of orchestral textures in the opera, both were very impressive. I thought the latter might have used a little more dynamic restraint, but I don't know the score, and the overwhelming quality of the fortissimi may have been just what was called for.

Prokoviev's first violin concerto is singularly lovely; in this performance, it also registered as uneasy and elegiac. Its unusual form and unusual melodic patterns seemed to be gesturing towards an inarticulable truth. Lisa Batiashvili played with clarity and, in the first and third movements, with a haunting, remote melancholy of tone. Within the melancholy of the first movement she found extraordinary nuance, using the melodic progressions to move from near-anger to reflection sensual and sad as a rainy day, expressing questions of hope and fear. The strings supporting her were soft and smooth, the winds skillful and sympathetic in their echoing of the solo line. Gilbert emphasized the aggressive plurality of conflicting orchestral voices in the scherzo, with malicious pizzicato strings, wild winds, and dangerous brass. Batiashvili too embraced the unsettling mischief of the movement, varying her bowing technique, sometimes sweeping or bouncing against the strings, sometimes playing with almost delirious fluidity. Against the driven rhythms of the strings, the anxious questioning of the woodwinds, the plunging brass in the third movement, the dreamy romanticism of the solo violin wins an improbable victory. The intensity of the opera, in the second half, was of a different nature.