Bayerische Staatsoper 2019-20 plus my picks

The first list is premiers.  Only one is a world premier.  The rest are production premiers

Premiers pre Korngold:  Die tote Stadt Jonas Kaufmann, Marlis Petersen pre Abrahamsen: The Snow Queen Barbara Hannigan, Peter Rose pre Bartok: Duke Bluebeard's Castle Nina Stemme, John Lundgren pre Verdi: I Masnadieri Diana Damrau, Charles Castronovo pre Abramovic:7 Deaths of Maria Callas 7 different women-world premier pre Rameau: Castor et Pollux ? don't know these people pre Verdi: Falstaff Wolfgang Koch, Okka von der Dammerau pre Thomas: Mignon Opera studio

 Here is the rest of the opera repertoire.  Dates in front signify when this opera was streamed before.

 

	Beethoven:  Fidelio:	Adrianne Pieczonka, Günther Groissböck, Klaus Florian Vogt
	Berg:  Wozzeck:	Christian Gerhaher
	Bizet:  Carmen	Matthew Polenzani
2015	Donizetti:  L’elisir d’amore:	Pretty Yende, Mariusz Kwiecien, Ambrogio Maestri
2015	Donizetti:  Lucia di Lammermoor	Pretty Yende, Javier Camarena, Quinn Kelsey
	Gluck:  Alceste	Dorothea Röschmann,
	Haydn:  Orlando Paladino	Mathias Vidal, Tara Erraught
	Humperdinck:  Hänsel und Gretel:	Tara Erraught
	Johann Strauß:   Die Fledermaus:
2019	Krenek:  Karl V.	Bo Skovhus
	Mozart:  Cosi fan Tutte	Tara Erraught
	Mozart:  Die Zauberfloete	Pavol Breslik
	Mozart:  Don Giovanni	Erwin Schrott, Luca Pisaroni, Carmen Giannattasio
	Mussorgsky:  Boris Godunow:	Dimitry Ulyanov
	Offenbach:  Les Contes d’Hoffmann	Michael Spyres
	Puccini:  La bohème:
	Puccini:  La fanciulla del West	Anja Kampe, Brandon Jovanovich
	Puccini:  Tosca:	Anja Harteros
	Puccini:  Turandot:	Anna Netrebko, Yusif Eyvazov
	Rossini:  Guillaume Tell:	Gerald Finley, Michael Spyres
	Rossini:  Il barbiere di Siviglia
	Rossini:  La Cenerentola	Teresa Iervolino
2019	Smetana:  Die Verkaufte Braut
	Strauss:  Salome	Marlis Petersen, Wolfgang Koch
	Strauss:  Die sweigsame Frau
	Tchaikovsky:  Eugen Onegin:	Pavol Breslik
	Verdi:  Don Carlo	Charles Castronovo, Ludovic Tézier, Ildar Abdrazakov, Anja Harteros
2013	Verdi:  Il Trovatore	Anja Harteros
	Verdi:  Nabucco:	Placido Domingo, Liudmyla Monastyrska
2018	Verdi:  Otello:	Jonas Kaufmann, Anja Harteros
	Verdi:  Rigoletto:	Ludovic Tezier, Erin Morley
	Verdi:  La traviata:	multiple
	Wagner:  Der fliegende Holländer:	Michael Volle
2018	Wagner:  Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg:	Wolfgang Koch, Jonas Kaufmann,
	Wagner:  Lohengrin:	Klaus Florian Vogt, Anja Harteros
2018	Wagner:  Parsifal:	Anja Kampe

I would like to see Netrebko's Turandot and anything with Anga Harteros.  We have been promised over and over Die Meistersinger with Jonas Kaufmann.  Could we finally see it, please?

Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera 2019-2020

This is the official announcement.  It isn't completely working to paste this, but you should get the idea.

2019-2020 Season The City is the Stage The Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera is the capitol region's proud success story—playing to sold out houses all season. The coming 2019-20 season will be especially exciting! Look for your renewal packet coming in the mail this week. As the Community Center Theater is being renovated for your comfort, all of Sacramento will become the Philharmonic's stage. Three venues have been selected — showcasing music programmed specifically to the acoustic of each. In the coming year, you'll have the opportunity to experience music in: MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM — where Sacramento's first orchestra appeared, will resound with Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin — and the season's opera to be announced this fall. FREMONT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH — with its grand and powerful organ, will thunder in Saint-Saëns' roaring "Organ Symphony," plus symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart. CATHEDRAL OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT — downtown Sacramento's jewel, will cradle Faure's tender Requiem, and intimate works of Vaughn-Williams and Thomas Tallis. And your season concludes with the return to the renovated Sacramento Community Center Theater in Fall of 2020. The deadline to renew is Saturday, April 27, 2019 Remember, by renewing now, you are assuring that you will be the first to be seated in the renovated hall! Ways to Renew: Mail in your renewal form (watch your mailbox for the renewal packet) Call the SP&O Box Office at 916-476-5975, Monday-Friday 10am-2pm Visit the SP&O Box Office in person, Monday-Friday 10am-2pm NEW! Click the button below to renew online RENEW NOW Season at a Glance The 2019-2020 season is generously underwritten by Nancy McRae Fisher. TCHAIKOVSKY'S "PATHÉTIQUE"   -   MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM Saturday, October 19, 2019 Andrew Grams, conductor William Hagen, violin WAGNER "Tannhäuser" March MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique"   OPERA FAVORITES: ALL MOZART   -   FREMONT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Friday, November 8, 2019 Saturday, November 9, 2019 Michael Christie, conductor MOZART Operatic Finales from "Cosí fan tutte", "The Magic Flute", "The Marriage of Figaro" MOZART Symphony No. 41, "Jupiter"   1812 OVERTURE   -   MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM Saturday, February 1, 2020 Christopher Rountree, conductor COPLAND Rodeo GERSHWIN Second Rhapsody TIAN Transcend Commission for 150th Anniversary of Transcontinental Railroad TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture   MUSIC OF THE SPIRIT   -   CATHEDRAL OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT Friday, February 14, 2020 Saturday, February 15, 2020 Douglas Boyd, conductor VAUGHN-WILLIAMS Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis TALLIS Psalm Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter FAURE Requiem   SAINT-SAËNS "ORGAN SYMPHONY"   -   FREMONT PRESBYTERIAN Friday, March 13, 2020 Saturday, March 14, 2020 Robert Moody, conductor James Jones, organ Organ Recital with James Jones BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 SAINT-SAËNS Symphony No. 3, "Organ Symphony"   OPERA FINALE   -   MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM Saturday, April 25, 2020 Christoph Campestrini, conductor Opera to be announced in Fall 2019   RETURN TO THE NEWLY RENOVATED SACRAMENTO COMMUNITY CENTER THEATER

Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix

Something to brighten your morning.

Juditha Triumphans

Conductor: Andrea Marcon
Orchestra: La Cetra Barockorchester Basel 
Director: Floris Visser

Juditha, contralto, a Bethulian widow: Gaëlle Arquez
Holofernes, contralto, Assyrian general: Teresa Iervolino
Vagaus, soprano, eunuch, Holofernes's squire: Vasilisa Berzhanskaya
Ozias, contralto, high priest of Bethulia: Francesca Ascioti
Abra, soprano, Juditha's handmaid: Polly Leech
Jewish virgin: Gloria Giurgola

Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans (Judith Triumphs) was streamed from the Dutch National Opera on Operavision.  My usual source book says this was an oratorio in Latin, here performed in Italian and staged as an opera.  Interesting.  The story is from the book of Judith from the apocrypha, as it is called by protestants.  All of the singers are female, including the chorus, because Vivaldi taught at a girls' school.  There do seem to be quite a few male supers, many in NAZI uniforms, and occasionally they sing with the chorus of soldiers.  Holofernes and his troops are Assyrian while the people in mufti are Jews from Bethulia.  The timing of the original performance in Venice suggests that it is translated into an oratorio about the Turks invading Corfu in 1716.  So 3 time periods.

• Book of Judith old testament era
• Oratorio by Vivaldi 1716 not staged.
• WWII Nazis 1940s for the staging.

The orchestration is astounding.  The same reference says: "The string orchestra is augmented by timpani, 2 trumpets, mandolino, 4 theorbos, 5 lyra viols (viols), 1 viola d'amore, 2 recorders, 2 chalumeaux (soprano) [ancestor of the clarinet], 2 oboes, organ."   I am hearing harpsichord.  Impressive.  It sounds much thicker than your average Baroque Italian orchestra.  In general Baroque scores don't show full orchestration, but to know more about these things, I would have to consult a Vivaldi specialist.

To begin we have the famous painting of Judith Beheading Holofernes (oops.  spoiler alert) by Caravaggio c. 1598.  People are shot.  Judith tries to persuade Holofernes that his power would be enhanced by clemency.

Structurally this is a Neapolitan opera with one florid da capo aria after another.  Maybe an opera would have more recitative.  The Assyrians are a bit creepy.  At about 1:40 the above painting is unveiled.  They are Nazis, so perhaps they are looting it.  This gives her the idea?  Yes.  She chops off his head.  At the end we are transported back to Venice, Judith regrets her deed and tears up the Caravaggio painting.

Musically this is a triumph.  The sounds are varied and fascinating.  We are hearing the real thing.  Vivaldi vocal music is seriously neglected by everyone except Cecilia Bartoli.

Lawrence Brownlee and Eric Owens

Lawrence Brownlee and Eric Owens came to visit at Mondavi to perform arias, spirituals, pop songs and whatever else they wanted.  They brought Myra Huang to accompany them on the piano.  She skillfully navigated the range of musical styles on this concert.  The whole concert was performed with the lid all the way up which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.

The program was divided into two parts:  the operatic repertoire they are famous for and spirituals, pop songs, and gospel songs.  We'll begin with the classical.  The house lights remained up for this part.

Larry and Eric are at opposite ends of the male operatic voices.  Eric is a bass-baritone while Larry soars high above almost everyone in the coloratura tenor category.  Eric does Wagner and Gershwin while Larry does Mozart, Rossini and Donizetti.  There isn't a lot of overlap in their repertoire.

To represent his usual stuff Larry brought us:

• Il mio tesoro from Mozart's Don Giovanni
• Una furtiva lagrima from Donizetti's Elixir of love
• Ah mes amis from Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment

This pretty much covers it.  The Donizetti arias are the main ones that receive encores these days, and he gave encore worthy performances.

"Una furtiva lagrima" came after they sang a duet from the same opera where the baritone conman sells the tenor a bottle of wine as a supposed love potion, "Voglio dire."  This is more fun when it's acted.

Eric sang

• Se vuol ballare from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro
• Infelice! E tuo crevedi from Verdi's Ernani
• Le veau d'or from Gounod's Faust

They finished with "Au fond du temple saint" from Bizet's Pearl Fishers, one of the greatest male duets in the repertoire.  I enjoyed all of this, but Larry in his high tessitura more successfully soared over the piano.

The lights went down for part 2.  The rest of the program started with spirituals such as Marian Anderson used to sing.  I thought of her when they performed a duet of "He's got the whole world in his hands."  This was her trademark song.  Eric excelled in "Deep River."

I didn't know all of the pop songs, but Eric Owens singing "Some enchanted evening" was wonderful.  The selection was puzzling.

They finished with two gospel songs.

• I don't feel no ways tired
• Every time I feel the spirit

It seemed like a concert as co-biography.  There was an encore but my memory has failed me.

It was a pleasure.

Budget Cuts at the San Francisco Opera

Budget cuts were announced today by cutting administrative staff at the San Francisco Opera.  Read here.

Joyce on medici.tv

This is sort of bizarre.  Who would think of such a thing?  We all started out with a small blue book called Classic Italian Songs.  It came in different keys.  I got my first copy in a high school voice class where we sang, yes, "Caro mio ben."  I very quickly graduated to choir.

I haven't wandered too far off the subject.  Joyce DiDonato is singing them with a jazz ensemble backup.  They are originally scored for figured bass.  You knew that.  So why can't a jazz ensemble realize a figured bass as well as the next person?  This is in New York.

Now she's added one of those tango accordions to her ensemble.  She wanders off to other songs after a while.  It's fun.

La Fille du Regiment

Conductor..................Enrique Mazzola
Production.................Laurent Pelly

Marie......................Pretty Yende
Tonio......................Javier Camarena
Marquise of Berkenfield....Stephanie Blythe
Sergeant Sulpice...........Maurizio Muraro
Hortentius.................Paul Corona
Duchesse of Krakentorp.....Kathleen Turner

Today's HD from the Met is La Fille du Regiment, a revival of the Laurent Pelly production.  I didn't think this was possible, but it was even more fun than with Natalie Dessay.

Tonio is a Tyrolean, and Marie is a found child raised by a regiment of the French army invading Tyrol.  Marie does laundry and peels potatoes.  She also wanders off into a neighboring village where she meets Tonio.  Pretty Yende does the best job ever of seeming to be a young woman raised by a troop of soldiers.  She swears, though I noticed they didn't translate this.

This was also an historic occasion:  we had the first bis (encore) in any HD performance.   Of course this was for Javier Camarena's performance of "Ah mes amis" with the famous 9 high Cs.  So with a bis that makes 18 high Cs.  Dare we say it?  He is the new king of the high Cs.

This is such a marvelous cast with gorgeous singing and lively acting that swept us along.  We laughed and cried and rejoiced when aunt/mother allows Marie and Tonio to wed.  Wonderful.

I missed the sprouted potato found with Marie's souvenirs in previous performances.

Telegraph Quartet

Jeremiah Shaw, cello, Joseph Maile, violin, Eric Chin, violin, Pei-Ling Lin, viola.  

The Telegraph Quartet came once again to play at my alma mater as part of the New Millennium Concert Series. 

They have delved deeper than Schubert and Mozart this time.  The three pieces below are all by Czech composers.

String Quartet No. 10, Opus 51 by Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904).  This is the most conservative of these three selections.

• Allegro ma non troppo
• Dumka:  Andante con moto - Vivace
• Romanza:  Andante con moto
• Finali:  Allegro Assai

Five Pieces for String Quarter by Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942).  He was a German jew born in Czechoslovakia and died in the holocaust.  I enjoyed this very much.  It might possibly be called a suite, though certainly not in the classical form.

• I. Alla valse Viennese (Allegro)
• II. Alla serenata (Allegretto con moto)
• III. Alla Czeca (Molto allegro)
• IV. Alla tango milonga (Andante)
• V. Alla tarantella (Prestissimo con fuoco)

String Quartet No. 6, Op.35 by Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996)  I guess this guy is Polish and was born in Warsaw to a musical family.  When the war broke out, he fled to Minsk in the USSR.  Shostakovitch encouraged him to move to Moscow.

• Allegro semplice
• Presto aggitato
• Allegro con fuoco
• Adagio
• Moderato comodo
• Andante maestoso

The Telegraph Quartet is moving toward twentieth and twenty-first century works.  If they can bring us great style as we heard today, I encourage this.  After all, I'm a long time Kronos Quartet fan.

Les Troyens from the Paris Opera

I am viewing a film of Berlioz' Les Troyens from the Paris opera.

Conductor:  Philippe Jordan
Production: Dmitri Tcherniakov

The Trojans at Troy

Aeneas: Brandon Jovanovich
Cassandra: Stéphanie d'Oustrac
Coroebus, Cassandra's fiance: Stéphane Degout, bass

Something like a movie marquee announces in French and English that the Greeks have abandoned their positions around Troy, and the war is over.  The streets fill with celebrators.  This is a regie production of Berlioz' Les Troyens from the Paris opera.  The characters are introduced with text at the top of the screen.  Priam looks a lot like Generalissimo Franco.  The billboard clarifies the action as perhaps never before.

I found Act I very coherent.  We don't see a horse, but the death of Laocoon is vividly described.  Cassandra warns and laments, but no one listens.

Where Act II should begin, we see soldiers with automatic rifles enter and shake hands with Aeneas.  Hmm.  So are we to believe he is a traitor?  His wife is dead and sends him a note explaining she is ashamed by his betrayal.  This is unclear.  Perhaps I have completely misunderstood.  His own people still seem to honor him.

Priam and his wife are shown dead.  Stéphanie d'Oustrac is wonderfully intense.  The men all head off and leave the women to die or be taken into slavery.  They choose death, and Cassandra goes up in flames.  I seem to remember a play by Euripides called The Trojan Women which describes a somewhat different fate for them.

This part of the opera is well presented.

The Trojans at Carthage

Dido: Ekaterina Semenchuk
Aeneas: Brandon Jovanovich
Anna: Aude Extremo
Narbal: Christian Van Horn

A title announces that we are in a Psychological Center for Victims of the War.  The set looks a bit like a hotel lobby.  This is my third insane asylum opera after Carmen (also Tcherniakov) and Oberon.  This part of the staging has nothing to do with either Berlioz's opera or the staging of the first half.  Yes, people in war are often in need of psychiatric care, but the opera is about the triumph of Rome, not mental illness.  Perhaps it is better to just listen.  The audio is gorgeous.  This staging is definitely boo worthy.

I may never have realized before what a great opera for chorus this is.  Dido enters and the chorus holds up a homemade sign saying "Tu es notre Reine." [You are our queen.]  Aeneas's son holds up his cell phone to show pictures of Troy to Dido.  Ach!  One is interested in the translation because nothing in the visuals is giving you a clue.  I missed before that these people of Carthage are from the eastern Mediterranean, just like the Trojans.  That explains a lot.

A black guy comes in and Aeneas tries to beat him up.  Weird.  The essential feature of an insane asylum is the keepers who now enter in red vests and lead everyone out.  It is hard to imagine any other tenor besides Jovanovich playing this scene.  I'm determined to watch it to the end, but it gets goofier and goofier.

In Act IV the patients are in a circle, and enact a story.  They hold up signs to indicate where they are and what is going on.  The title of the story is "La Chasse Royale."  Perhaps you will recall that Dido and Aeneas go out into the country on a hunt.  "The forest" is next.  The audience for these signs appears to be Dido alone.  We have nymphs and naiads and satyrs.  When the sign says "The marriage of Dido" [you're not required to trust my translations], Aeneas is handed a bow and arrow which he waves around.  He shoots Dido's companion and Dido faints.  The arrow is theater, and the companion is fine.  We were wondering why they would give a mental patient a weapon.

Dido goes back to her room, and a ping pong table appears.  Two keepers in red vests then proceed to play ping pong and sing about triumphing over the Africans. These are Dido's advisers?  Oy.  They plot the marriage of Dido to Aeneas.  There has been nothing that even remotely resembles ballet.

This director seems to be under the impression that psychiatric treatment consists of arranging fantasy scenarios for the patients.  Problems arise because the patients react as though they were real.  This doesn't correspond to any therapeutic method I have heard of.  In a nuthouse apparently anything can happen.

When everyone else has left the stage, Dido and Aeneas sing a very gorgeous version of "Nuit d'ivresse," one of the most beautiful duets in all of opera.  The ending is kind of cool.