This is the tenor aria from Der Rosenkavalier.
Pavarotti
Fritz Wunderlich
Piotr Beczala
Jonas Kaufmann
Roberto Sacca
Ben Heppner
Who do you like?
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Adriana Lecouvreur in HD
Production: David McVicar
Adriana Lecouvreur, an actress: Anna Netrebko
Maurizio, the Count of Saxony: Piotr Beczala
Princess di Bouillon, also in love with Maruizio: Anita Rachvelishvili
Prince di Bouillon, her husband: Maurizio Muraro
Michonnet, stage manager: Ambrogio Maestri
Today the metropolitan Opera brought us Francesco Cilèa's Adriana Lecouvreur in HD. Our host was Matthew Polenzani. The opera is from 1902 in the era of verismo.
It was a single set production with a raised stage area in the center. This was useful in portraying an opera about an historical figure who was an actress. Most of the scenes have some kind of performance, including a ballet. I enjoyed when the stage was shown from the angle of the wings, always my favorite perspective.
Gianandrea Noseda shaped the music in the most beautiful way. Today was my best reaction to his conducting. In his interview he expressed his respect for the vocal performers.
At the beginning we see that Adriana has not heard from her lover whom she believes to be a soldier away at battle. She is preparing for her entrance where she plays Roxane, the heroine of Cyrano de Bergerac, I believe. He comes in, woos her ardently and arranges to meet her after the play. Adriana's most beautiful arias "Io son l'umile ancella" comes in this act. The plot is a bit hard to follow here. Who exactly is Duclos? Her name is not listed in the cast. Maurizio receives a letter and cancels on Adriana. He is obviously a cad whatever his feelings might be. Michonnet wants Adriana to marry him.
Not to be outdone, the Princess sings "Acerba voluttà, dolce tortura" while anxiously awaiting the arrival of Maurizio. Again more plot complexities. Maurizio arrives, Adriana arrives and figures out who Maurizio actually is, the Princess's husband arrives and they sneak her out of the meeting place without Adriana discovering who she is. By the end of the opera everyone has discovered the identity of everyone else, Adriana is angry with the Princess and insults her, and finally Adriana is poisoned with flowers, aria "Poveri fiori". The person who deserves the anger, the Count of Saxony, gets off.
The plot confusion interferes with ones overall pleasure. It's rather like a murder mystery. The music is sweet and not at all murder-mystery-like. The cast is spectacular. Ambrogio Maestri is very sweet as the stage manager in love with Adriana. I have only seen him as Falstaff.
Anita rose to her angry bitch character to make the perfect foil for Anna Piotr convincingly wooed both women, demonstrating his skills at seduction.
But this performance belonged to Anna Netrebko, intense in every scene, the diva incarnate. All hail Anna. Perhaps I will go again on Wednesday.
______________________________
P.S A commenter left this on Facebook:
Roxane here is a character of "Bajazet" which is a tragedy by Racine. That is why at some point Adriana is called Gran Sultana. This is about the character she was portraying in first act. (Cyrano de Bergerac was written at very end of 19th Century. Therefore Lecouvreur could not have played it).
Friday, January 11, 2019
Astronaut La Boheme
Claus Guth | Stage director
Nicole Car | Mimì
Aida Garifullina | Musetta
Atalla Ayan | Rodolfo
Artur Ruciński | Marcello
Medici.tv is running the Puccini La Boheme from Paris that is set in outer space. I wrote briefly about this here, but other people said they loved it, so I'm giving it a second chance.
We begin in a space station with the astronauts wearing space suits without the helmets. This is fun, but no matter what you normally do, if you do not read French, you must put on the subtitles, because there is added text which explains what you are seeing. Dudamel is magnificent.
They are caught in a catastrophe and remember their loves from before they were astronauts. I guess. The singing is lovely, especially Mimi. This is clearly Rodolfo's fantasy, and it is unbearably sentimental. And beautiful. Give yourself over to this fantasy. Everyone dies.
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Cosi with Cecilia
Conductor...............James Levine
Production..............Lesley Koenig
Fiordiligi..............Carol Vaness
Ferrando...............Jerry Hadley
Dorabella..............Susanne Mentzer
Guglielmo.............Dwayne Croft
Despina.................Cecilia Bartoli
Don Alfonso..........Thomas Allen
In 1996 I recorded Mozart's Cosi fan tutte with Cecilia Bartoli in her Met debut as Despina when it came on public television, but my son taped over it. This quarrel came near the beginning of my wild infatuation with La Bartoli. I decided to keep him anyway. So this year he gave me a year of Met on Demand making this my first opportunity to watch it after all these years.
This production ran at the Met until very recently. It is visually inert, but this means nothing when Cecilia is on the stage. Her face alone is filled with liveliness. She is constantly in motion. I do rather like the men's disguises.
Cecilia does recitative like no one else. I wish very much that her Met career had been longer. Her wonderful theatrical magnetism dominates every scene she is in, though this role doesn't show off the coloratura she has become famous for. As a doctor she wears a large red nose.
Musically it's rather blah as well. These are all good singers, so more could have been expected. In those days Levine was the only conductor we saw. He doesn't find anything interesting in this score.
Towards the end Cecilia is in her notary disguise with giant eyebrows and a giant mustache, far more spectacular than those worn by our Albanians. She provides what life there is in the production, but I would recommend it for this alone. At the end our Despina realizes that she has been used and throws down the money Don Alfonso has given her.
This comic masterpiece has to be the most unusual Met debut by an already wildly famous singer ever.
Monday, January 07, 2019
Blogging
As a Kelly Clarkson fan, I was excited to learn that Kelly has a classical singing background. She's too good. It can't be an accident.
Sunday, January 06, 2019
Die verkaufte Braut from Munich
Marie and Hans
Conductor: Tomáš Hanus
Staging: David Bösch
Selene Zanetti (Marie)
Pavol Breslik (Hans)
Günther Groissböck (Kezal)
I was in Smetana's Die verkaufte Braut long ago. I played Marie's mother. We did it in German exactly as it is here in this live stream from the Bayerische Staatsoper. I even have my old score here near the computer. Since I began blogging, I have only seen this in London and on DVD. It is a sentimental favorite. In English we call it The Bartered Bride/
The plot concerns itself with love, of course. Marie was promised in a contract with Kezal to marry only "Toby Mischa's son." Who is an idiot who stutters and has a pet pig. She likes Hans, played by one of the sexiest men on the opera stage. They give away the plot in the credits which may explain why people think there is no plot. This is sort of the male version of Cinderella.
My heart leaps at the familiar overture. The music is lovely, the singing is terrific and Günther Groissböck is a hoot, the best possible Kezal. It's wonderful to see this now and then. I hated the set.
Thursday, January 03, 2019
Arabella with Kiri
Production Otto Schenk
Arabella: Kiri Te Kanawa
Zdenka: Marie McLaughlin
Adelaide Waldner: Helga Dernesch
Matteo David Kuebler
Mandryka: Wolfgang Brendel
Count Waldner: Donald McIntyre
Fiakermilli: Natalie Dessay
For my first full opera on my year of Met on Demand I have chosen Kiri Te Kanawa in Strauss's Arabella, I believe from 1994.
They have given her a handsome, passionate Mandryka in Wolfgang Brendel. I promise not to review everything I watch, but this has to be an exception. This is by far the most traditional production I have seen for Arabella. The world has changed, and I don't suppose there are counts and countesses everywhere anymore. There is certainly no Austrian emperor today. So a traditional production seems suitable.
It is fun to see Natalie Dessay pop in for a moment.
Arabella wants the some enchanted evening experience where you suddenly fall in love across a crowded room. Mandryka is even worse. He falls in love with a photograph. The mystery of Arabella is the Zdenka/Zdenko character who falls in love with one of Arabella's suitors, a young man named Matteo who sends Arabella flowers every day. She knows she has to marry money, and she knows he doesn't have any. No one pays any attention to Zdenko/Zdenka, a girl pretending to be a boy. She almost ruins everything. She writes love letters to Matteo. She seems almost invisible. Even her mother pays her no attention.
For me I love to see the same piece performed in very different ways. I probably saw Kiri in this in San Francisco, but now I am more familiar with the opera. Kiri is at the sweet end of the range of emotions. Perhaps Anja Harteros is at the other.
West Edge Opera 2019
We have the 2019 West Edge Opera Festival August 3 - 19.
Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera
Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves
Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo and Euridice
We also have a location: The Bridge Yard, 210 Burma Road, Oakland. For me this is great news. I love everything Weill, have yet to see the perfect Orfeo and am very much looking forward to Breaking the Waves.
Tuesday, January 01, 2019
L'Italiana in Algeri from Salzburg
Conductor: Jean-Christophe Spinosi
Production: Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier
Isabella: Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo)
Mustafa: Ildar Abdrazakov (baritone)
Lindoro: Edgardo Rocha (tenor)
Taddeo, suitor: Alessandro Corbelli (baritone)
Elvira, Mustafa's wife: Rebeca Olvero (soprano)
Constant searching has led me to a film of Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri from Whitsun at Salzburg in 2018. This is regie, of course. The subtitles seem to be in French. We are in Mustafa's bedroom where his wife makes advances while husband Mustafa is sleeping. He doesn't like it. Lindoro comes in with a vaccuum, smoking, wearing dreads and a tattoo. There is lots of nice music for Lindoro and Mustafa. The houses in the street all have satellite dishes.
After the guys leave, Cecilia comes in riding on a camel. Camel raises tail, Cecilia holds nose. This is an opera comedy that seems actually to be funny. Corbelli runs out of one of the stores to save Cecilia from bandits waving guns? She says he is her uncle and shows her passport. Isabella is a contralto and is fairly easy for Cecilia. Everything is charming. I'm so glad she is singing this and that I am finally seeing it. My traveling days may be over.
In the next scene Isabella meets Mustafa and critiques his figure. In a row behind them are men smoking hookahs and blowing the smoke out onto the stage. Lindoro and Isabella see each other. Stuffed chairs roll around the stage. Isabella tells Mustafa he already has a wife.
This is fun. It is wonderful to see Isabella played by the essential Italian woman. Cecilia has long been my favorite Italian.
In the prelude to act 2 there are annoying banging sounds which turn out to be people slicing vegetables. The male chorus, clearly Mustafa's flunkies, carry boxes of electronics. Is Mustafa selling them, stealing them, what? Mustafa is arranging a meeting with Isabella. Cecilia enters smoking, but I don't see smoke. Sight gags. Smooching.
Taddeo takes off his trousers and is wearing Superman briefs. We have as many sight gags as you could possibly want. I am enjoying this very much. Suddenly male chorus all have guns and shoot them off. Perhaps Mustafa is an Algerian mafioso.
Back in Isabella's apartment she is taking a bubble bath with people all around, including us, of course. Mustafa enters in his night clothes and tries to get an eyeful. Isabella is waving bras around and singing. It is a fact that this is my first time seeing the Italian Girl in Algiers with a real Italian girl. So we know what has been missing. The aria ends and Lindoro wheels the bathtub off stage. Isabella soon reenters in her nightgown. Taddeo assumes the lotus position. Everything is getting out of control when Elvira enters. Mustafa passes out. We see clips of La Dolce Vita where Anita Ekberg gets into the Trevi Fountain, the ultimate Italian woman film.
I don't know what the general reception for this production was, but I am loving it. It is colossally silly with the spectacular Cecilia Bartoli in the middle. I find that I am shockingly unfamiliar with most of the music in this opera.
In the final scene the male chorus are all dressed as soccer players. Isabella feeds them from a giant pot of pasta. She sings "Pensa la patria" to Lindoro who is also Italian. This is at last familiar, probably from one of Cecilia's albums. She flirts with everyone. Mustafa is to be made a Pappataci. He goes back to his regular wife and the Italians all sail off for Italy. Bon voyage. Everyone lives happily ever after. Isabella and Lindoro are doing Titanic at the end, but let's assume their fates are different. How many icebergs can there be in the Mediterranean?
For me this production was perfect. Yes, it's modernized but I found the changes never to be a distortion of the story. After all, an Italian woman is an Italian woman in any era. I also thought the cast was as good as it gets, most of all our Italian woman, Cecilia Bartoli.
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