Allegro io son: Brownlee's bel canto

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 bel canto. The artistry of Lawrence Brownlee, though, drew me to his new album of Bellini and Donizetti, Allegro io son, 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.

Maria Stuarda: La vittima regia

A tale of two queens: Van den Heever and DiDonato in Maria Stuarda

Donizetti's Maria Stuarda is unabashedly a one-issue opera. The lineaments of the drama are clear (slimmed down from Schiller's play, with a libretto by Giuseppe Badari), but Donizetti is more interested in providing emotional confrontations than developing context for the political anxieties of Cecil and Elisabetta, or the ambitions of Leicester and Talbot. Even the fraught (and entirely fabricated) romantic triangle between Maria, her ardent lover Leicester, and his ex-lover Elisabetta (!) is presented without explanation, and practically without comment. The opera has the strengths of its selective focus: its tension is derived almost entirely from the uncertain fate of its titular protagonist, prisoner and political liability for the queen of England. As in the case of Anna Bolena, the complexities and obscurities of historical drama have been transmuted to create the ingredients of good Romantic drama: the wronged Maria suffers while the factions of the English court (represented by the sympathetic Talbot and the hostile Cecil) attempt to persuade the hesitating Elisabetta to determine her rival's fate once and for all. The work is well-structured, and the music often exciting, if predictable in the techniques it uses to generate excitement. The Met has given Maria Stuarda a sleek new production and a starry cast, showcasing it in this year's New Year's Eve gala. While I found the performance engaging, I suspect the piece might have been better served by a more irreverent approach to its Romantic conventions.

Bene! Bravi! Benedetti! Olivo e Pasquale at Amore Opera

Amore Opera's cousins

What's the best way to spend your last hours out and about before an advancing hurricane shuts down the NYC transit system? Attending a rarely-performed opera by Donizetti, obviously. The intrepid souls of Amore Opera played to a full house in the second performance of a run which marks the U.S. premiere of Olivo e Pasquale, an insouciant comedic confection from 1827. The numerous references to metaphorical and hypothetical storms in the libretto drew chuckles, but the final ensemble exults that sternness has vanished like fog on the wind, and peace may shine as the sun on the young lovers (Isabella and Camillo) and their friends and relations. The complications of the action include a trio where a housekeeper tries to persuade the melancholy lovers to sensible scheming rather than sighing, a duet where cousins Olivo and Pasquale mutually accuse each other of stupidity ("Siete un asino calzato"), and what the program note called "an inexplicable epidemic of eavesdropping." The vivacious soprano, daughter to domestic tyrant Olivo (bass), has no fewer than three suitors: the drunken hanger-on Columella, the meek bookkeeper Camillo (mezzo), and Le Bross, the dashing foreign suitor chosen by her father (mezzo.) Pasquale is the phlegmatic baritone constantly seeking to spread sweetness and light. ("Eat more pastries!" he tells the heroine. "Don't wear yourself out with working!" he tells her lover.) Everyone runs about proclaiming their feelings and dispensing disregarded advice in bel canto ensembles until a feigned double-suicide forces Olivo into softening and the plot into resolution; it's all quite charming.

Casa buona: Don Pasquale at Amore Opera

Donizetti's Don Pasquale is, like its protagonists, impish but goodhearted. Paired with the composer's lesser-known Olivo and Pasquale, the effervescent comedy opens Amore Opera's season in a staging (by Nathan Hull) that sets it in the Palermo of the early twentieth century. Pasquale's elegant world, slightly faded and slightly dusty, where everyone has a place and knows it, is tottering like him into old age. The ways in which this could have emphasized the tragedies of history are obvious, but the tone of this was resolutely light: the members of the younger generation, while mocking and eventually puncturing Pasquale's delusions, both respect and share his fundamental goodness. (I was half-expecting the unconventional Norina to have a motorcar, or at least a bicycle, but she remains merely vivacious.) Malatesta, suave and well-dressed, very much the modern businessman with an oft-consulted pocket watch, seems the most connected to the world outside Palermo. This world, however, is dim and distant, with the opera remaining a self-contained world abiding by the conventions which are satirized in score and libretto. The ensemble cast communicated this effectively and with charm, singing in a surprisingly good English translation.

È bordo, non elisir

Act I: everyone laments unwise choices

Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore is a charming opera: it is coherently and elegantly constructed; it is witty and winsome; its comedic scenarios are laced with a poignancy that makes the development of its characters satisfying. These are all virtues which Bartlett Sher's new production conspicuously lacks. Sher claimed to be inspired by the political upheavals of Italy in the 1830s, but his production resembled nothing so much as a second-rate landscape painting of the same period (with the possible exception of a second-rate opera production of a century later.) Men and women of all ages and walks of life crowd into the square to see Dulcamara's coach, but it is unclear why. Nemorino, who is mocked as being semi-literate, enters the stage reading a book. Adina eats fruit to establish her sensuality. Dulcamara is apparently supplying rifles to the anti-Austrian faction, but his air of bonhomie never alters, and the soldiers are deterred from investigation by a wave of the hand. Belcore and his implausibly immaculate soldiery harass the citizenry in an absent, halfhearted way, interrupting these efforts whenever it comes time to sing a chorus. Nemorino, perhaps for the sake of Romanticism, sings "Una furtiva lagrima" on a heath at dawn. Against this picturesque and pointless backdrop, a fine cast did their best to do the opera justice.

Son noto nell'universo: Elisir d'Amore on DVD

Adina and Nemorino (Ekaterina Siurina, Peter Auty) at Glyndebourne

I confess, Gentle Readers, to suffering from late-summer doldrums. There's comparatively little opera being performed in the city, and there's a great deal to be done before the academic year recommences. I'm trying to pretend, though, that the regular season is almost here, and directing my pursuit of opera on DVD to productions of operas featured by the Met in their upcoming season.  First on my list as on the Met's, then, is Donizetti's charming comedy L'elisir d'amore (incidentally a good antidote to the doldrums) in Annabel Arden's production for Glyndebourne in 2009. The production updated the setting to the 1930s, but without affecting the dynamics of the action considerably: this is still a rural community where Adina is just enough set apart, by class and education, to be intimidating for the likable farmhand Nemorino. The soldiers are Mussolini's blackshirts, but (disturbingly to me, as well as disappointingly) the production doesn't seem to have much to say about what this means. I could understand a directorial choice that showed class solidarity between the enlisted soldiers and the farmhands as overriding or mitigating the potential danger from the fascist state, but I didn't see that happening here. By far the most interesting (not to say the only interesting) feature of the production was the treatment of Dulcamara, here accompanied by a mute, tattooed, top-hatted assistant (James Bellorini.)

In quest'occhi è l' elisir

Kwicien, Damrau, Florez. Photo (c) Sara Krulwich/NY Times

A vocally superb and theatrically accomplished cast makes the Met's current run of L'Elisir d'Amore a joyful romp from start to finish. The orchestra played with verve under Donato Renzetti; there seemed to be some slight coordination issues, but the dramatic shape of scenes was well maintained. John Copley's 1991 production is a deliberately old-fashioned fantasia, a sleepy village watercolored onto flats, filled with pastel shepherdesses and a regiment as bright and self-important as freshly painted tin soldiers. The pastoral idyll is eventually crowned with an unapologetic explosion of pink clouds and putti. Thanks to luxurious singing, the humanity of Donizetti's comedy shone through.

Rataplan, rataplan! Fille du Régiment returns to Met

Machaidze, Brownlee, ensemble (c) Met Opera/Marty Sohl

The good old Twenty-First is back at the Met this winter, lifting spirits as always. Laurent Pelly's production flirts with kitsch, but I'm fond of it; its slightly off-kilter whimsy is a good fit for Donizetti's lighthearted, lightly caricatured hijinks. Yves Abel led the orchestra this time around, in a reading which was sympathetic to the characters' emotional troubles, but always seemed to know there was another joke around the corner. Maurizio Muraro reprised his turn as Sulpice, and was joined by Ann Murray as the Marquise, Lawrence Brownlee's ardent Tonio, and Nino Machaidze as the titular heroine. Kiri Te Kanawa was present as an irrepressible Duchesse de Krakenthorp.

Lieto evento: Anna Bolena at the Met

The modern performance history of Donizetti's Anna Bolena has been defined by its divas. For its first performance at the Met, Anna Netrebko took on the titular role and made it her own. David McVicar's austere, imposing sets worked to keep the drama moving inexorably forward. Having experienced his smart, sexy Trovatore, and admired his Salome, I was surprised by the extent of its traditionalism. Still, it was sleek and mostly unfussy, and Personenregie seemed solid (I do wonder how many of Anna's dramatic moments may be attributed to the director, and how many to the diva.) The Met orchestra were on excellent form, and Marco Armiliato's conducting was supportive, if not electrifying. There was much fine singing--notably from Tamara Mumford as Smeton--but Netrebko was without question the strongest presence.

Mistress, Queen, Romantic Heroine: The Many Roles of Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn: 16th century portrait

Anne Boleyn has proved as fascinating to posterity as she was to Henry VIII.  Scholars and dilettantes, poets and painters, have been fascinated by the second of the (in)famous English king's wives, the first to be executed... and that after accusations of plotting regicide, and committing adultery with no fewer than five men, including her own brother.  The subject is temptingly sensational, as a glance at a list of fictional works concerning the unfortunate queen demonstrates. The debates are virtually inexhaustible: how credible did the charges against her have to be? were they only a means to a desired end? desired by whom? I won't pretend to answer all these questions, but in honor of the 1 month countdown to the Met Opera's season opening performance of Donizetti's opera (I'm excited!) I present a brief summary of Anne's political and posthumous career.

Among the many historical inaccuracies of Donizetti's thoroughly Romantic opera, perhaps the most striking is the unanimous sympathy expressed by the chorus of courtiers for the queen herself. In actual fact, the factionalism of Henry's court was lively, bitter, and, in some scholarly interpretations, the chief cause of Anne Boleyn's downfall and eventual death.  During the years of Anne's favor with the king (longer than their marriage) members of her family and their allies were granted influential positions; such influence attracted envy, and in the years of Anne's uneasy position as Henry's mistress, it would be all too easy to claim that the king's judgment had been led astray by his passion. Even after her marriage and accession to the throne, even after the death of Katherine of Aragon, there were those who persistently referred to her as "the Concubine." What of Anne herself? Much ink, scholarly and otherwise, has been spilled in attempting to analyze her character and her motives. I personally find her more credible as player than pawn.  In fictional accounts of her story, naturally enough, legal innocence has been equated with good character, the definition of which is, of course, relative.   Modern novelists have read between the lines of her story to find a vivacious heroine whose attempts at self-expression and self-assertion brought her downfall.  For the Romantic movement which influenced Donizetti, however, she was a heroine of a very different sort.

Salut à la France!

Constructing national identities is a messy business, but tackling political injustice is always worth celebrating. Natalie Dessay is, I believe, also always worth celebrating! Le quatorze juillet seemed like an appropriate time to post this gem from Dessay, who has just been made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Mady Mesplé was also among those honored this year.) Is it possible to watch this without smiling? Here's to our hopes, here's to our loves. And as long as we're celebrating, why not find a nice bottle of Bordeaux and open it in honor of liberté, égalité, fraternité?

Caro elisir!

Lomeli and Nistico; photo (c) Carol Rosegg

Let me say at the outset that I like L'Elisir, and think that it's sweet and can even be profound, as well as being incontrovertibly funny.  And there were not-insignificant aspects where I felt that the City Opera's current production fell short of realizing this, but with a fundamentally good-natured Dulcamara, a Belcore who didn't take himself too seriously, an Adina who can trill journeying credibly towards self-awareness, and a perfectly adorable Nemorino, there was enough to keep me happy.  Let me get all my complaining about Jonathan Miller out of the way first, though.  Although the production is sleek enough, I didn't feel it was insightful.  I had hoped for possible poignant emphasis of social difference... but I didn't get much of that.  The surtitles were updated to 1950s America along with the rest of it, and as a gentleman in front of me observed, aside from the scudi ("bucks",) there aren't significant obstacles to this. But I didn't think the production did anything (well, it did slapstick comedy, against which I admit a bias.)  The Personenregie (credit to stage director A. Scott Parry) was nice when it wasn't slapstick; and the singers were creditably game in it all. 

Il dolce suono mi colpì

I went to Tuesday's performance of Lucia di Lammermoor for the sake of the singing, but the quality of the performances from the four principals surpassed my expectations.  Even in a production which didn't give them much help, I thought they also each managed to give a striking dramatic portrayal as well.  Despite some inconsistent conducting and the tragic absence of a glass harmonica (beautifully played flute solo, but I want my eerie esoteric instrument, please!) Donizetti's bel canto masterpiece shone.  As far as Mary Zimmerman's production goes, I think a stylized visual vocabulary based on the tropes of Gothic literature is actually a neat idea for Lucia, and the mixture of exaggerating certain elements (see the moon, above) with naturalism didn't strike me as too jarring (pictures here.)  However, and this is a not inconsiderable criticism, I didn't feel the production gave much support to the dramatic arc of the plot or the inner life of the characters; the stand-and-sing syndrome had a tendency to manifest itself.  The production did leave space for the characters to have inner life, and the two final scenes were, I thought, superior to the rest of the production in this respect, with Edgardo's death scene visually echoing Lucia's madness very movingly.

Bravo, bravo, Don Pasquale, la morale è molto bella

John del Carlo in the title role
(c) Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

Had I been actively seeking an antidote to late winter doldrums, I could have done no better than the final afternoon of Donizetti's Don Pasquale at the Met.  In the hands of the delightful cast, it becomes a gentle, affectionate send-up of Italian operatic conventions, as I suspect Donizetti intended in 1849.  In support of my thesis that Donizetti meant the joke, I cite the dramatis personae, which after listing the four principals says merely - A Notary.  All you need to know is that there will be a notary.  He is, of course, not a notary at all, but Malatesta's cousin, and I suspect he wore Danielle de Niese's notary outfit from Così fan tutte.  Typically demure soprano virtues are catalogued and then parodied wildly in the person of the feisty Norina, the tenor is not the most intelligent young man in the world but takes himself very seriously, the baritone is suave, and the bass doesn't know what's going on.  I am not entirely sure that Otto Schenk's production, an Italian idyll awash in Mediterranean pinks and golds and shabby charm, is in on the joke.  But it works as part of it.

I presumed that the ominous front-of-curtain appearance of a man in a suit was merely to echo the slips in our programs which said Anna Netrebko was indisposed.  No: Joseph Colaneri would be conducting; James Levine was ill.  Colaneri's reading of the score was bright and sprightly; there were a few issues of balance at the outset, but the orchestra was allowed to shine, and they performed with their customary excellence (I love you, cellos!)  The chorus didn't have a great deal to do, but they milled, tidied, and pronounced dolefully on the topsy-turvy household with great aplomb.  Regarding the principals, I have to add my voice to the universal acclaim they've garnered.

Quando m'en vo

Franco Corelli buying zeppole in Little Italy, (c) unknown

This past Sunday, despite a steady, drizzling rain, saw my neighbor-hood celebrating Ferragosto with restaurants adding sidewalk tables and menu specials, lots of music from stereos and bands alike, and more zeppole than you could shake a stick at.  The evening was finished off by an event sponsored by the pastry shop (the owner is a retired professor of Italian literature who likes Puccini and Pavarotti.)  After working at home, resisting the blandishment of riotous goings-on in the streets for most of the afternoon, I rewarded myself with this.  And it was a joy, an insouciant smörgåsbord of Sinatra hits delivered by the resident specialist, Neapolitan song by a second resident specialist, piano selections by Tchaikovsky and Debussy, and arias and duets from Verdi, Puccini (of course,) and Donizetti.

Quel bonheur, quel ivresse!

On Wednesday I ventured down through a fine snowstorm to secure rush tickets for "La Fille du Regiment"; what better way to celebrate being snowed in than by going out to the opera? Having seen the production once before with Florez and Dessay (Vienna 2007), I was most excited to see and hear Diana Damrau live at last. I was not disappointed: the vocal fireworks of the part, while not heavily ornamented, were completely solid, and her characterization was fearless, extending to sobs and shrieks of pique or delight. She charmed the house, and developed Marie's character touchingly over the course of the evening. At this point in Juan Diego Florez's career, enough is said when it is said that his ardent Tonio did not disappoint. (And if you somehow have missed hearing his Tonio, go here now to see the role's vocal centerpiece in the Met/ROH/Vienna co-production which is finishing up at the Met this week.) I never fail to be drawn in by his energy on stage, and he and Damrau made an irresistible duo.