Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix

Something to brighten your morning.

Adriana Lecouvreur in HD

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Conductor:  Gianandrea Noseda
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.
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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).

La Traviata in HD

Conductor.................Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production................Michael Mayer

Violetta.....................Diana Damrau
Alfredo.....................Juan Diego Flórez
Germont...................Quinn Kelsey

Hostess .................Anita Rachvelishvili

We were treated to the new production by Michael Mayer of Verdi's La Traviata live in HD from the Met.  I could not find a picture that looked just like the single set production.  The actual set had the piano upstage right instead of downstage left as shown here.  Throughout the opera Violetta's bed was downstage center.  It was simply integrated into the staging.  A dance in Act I successfully used this bed.

This versatile set looked remarkably different in each scene.  The busyness of the design, elaborate deco figures and costumes, was successfully offset by dressing Violetta in white, Alfredo in a dark military uniform and Germont in a brown suit.  They each easily stood out from the background.   Another unusual feature of the production was the appearance of Alfredo's sister in a mime role.  I am counting this as a successful production.

There seemed to be unusual unanimity of purpose here.  Much complaining appeared concerning Juan Diego's light voice, but my impression was that he fit impressively into the overall concept.  From beginning to end Violetta is a woman with a very serious disease who is dying.  We see this emphasized first through her lying on her death bed during the prelude.  Diana in particular played and sang her fragility.  This was a particularly beautiful performance which stayed close to the story.

Juan Diego's role was more varied, but was also acted extremely well.  And Quinn Kelsey has followed his line of great Verdi successes with a beautiful Germont performance.

This series is the debut of  Yannick Nézet-Séguin in his new role as music director.  Welcome, Yannick.  Singers love him.  We were shown in intermission a coaching session between Yannick and Diana, who said he was like a brother to her.  They were together in this beautiful, delicate concept of La Traviata.

I liked very much Anita as hostess.

Aida from New York

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Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Production:  Sonja Frisell

Aida:          Anna Netrebko
Radamès:   Aleksandrs Antonenko
Amneris:    Anita Rachvelishvili
Amonasro: Quinn Kelsey
Ramfis:      Dmitry Beloselskiy
King:          Ryan Speedo Green
Messenger: Arseny Yakovlev [Debut]
Priestess:    Gabriella Reyes, not seen [Debut]

Today was the simulcast of Verdi's Aida from the Metropolitan Opera starring Anna Netrebko and Anita Rachvelishvili.  This performance series was the first time these two great ladies had sung together.  They were perfection together and brought us a new Aida in spite of the same old production we have been seeing since 1988.  The scene with the two women together was the best I've ever seen.  Anna Netrebko brings an intensity to the role of Aida that exceeds all. Anita was much more a woman in love than the usual revengeful bitch.  These two ladies will sing together again in Adriana Lecouvreur later this season.

The film director has a lot of influence over the impression made by an HD broadcast.  In this case the emphasis was on the two women in love with Radamès.  Camera shots were often chosen for intimacy rather than pomp and melodrama.

Quinn Kelsey was beautiful as the Ethiopian King.  The only disappointment was in the Radamès of Aleksandrs Antonenko.  I heard so much grousing about him that I expected him to be rather more horrible than actually turned out to be the case.  However, it is still true that Anna deserved better.  I remember when Pavarotti made his debut in the role in San Francisco years ago, that there was a lot of grousing then, too.  I often wonder about the modern state of opera singer training.  He could benefit from better physical conditioning.

Nicola Luisotti was his usual wonderful self.  I found that the shift of emphasis off of war and on to romance found in this performance made for a very pleasurable Aida experience.

Il Trovatore from the ROH

Conductor: Richard Farnes
Director: David Bösch

Leonora: Lianna Haroutounian
Manrico, the troubadour: Gregory Kunde
Azucena, his gypsy mother: Anita Rachvelishvili
Count di Luna: Vitaliy Bilyy
Ferrando, his lieutenant:  Alexander Tsymbalyuk

This performance of Verdi's Il Trovatore from the Royal Opera House in London played in my local movie theater.  We were told that when this opera first played in America, it was called The Gypsy's Revenge.

This is my eighth viewing of this opera and my sixth production since I began blogging. Two were Sondra Radvanovsky, two were Anna Netrebko, one was Barbara Frittoli and one was Anja Harteros.  This is what an opera should be.  Here the production focuses on explaining the action.

This is one in a small set of operas I am calling the caravan series:  Il Turco in Italia from Los Angeles, Le Comte Ory from Zurich, Die Meistersinger from Munich and this performance all used a caravan at some point in the action.  In this performance Azucena lives here with her collection of baby dolls.

In this production all of the scenes are staged in the open air instead of the usual giant buildings with no particular identity or purpose.  The count and his army are at war with the gypsies.  He is in love with Leonora who is in love with the troubadour who sings to her from a distance.  If we are in large buildings, we cannot help wondering how a character from one group might casually approach a character from the other group.  If we are in the open air, this is not a problem.

Of this cast Anita Rachvelishvili was the most outstanding.  Her Azucena was intense and a bit mad.  Haroutounian sings beautifully but is not the big voiced singer we find with Radvanovsky, Netrebko or Harteros.  I enjoyed Kunde's singing but find him a bit too old to be Anita's son.

Selfie of the Week

Anita Rachvelishvili 

Carmen

Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado
Production: Richard Eyre
Live in HD host:  Joyce DiDonato

Micaëla: Anita Hartig  
Don José: Aleksandrs Antonenko  
Carmen: Anita Rachvelishvili  
Frasquita: Kiri Deonarine  
Mercédès: Jennifer Johnson Cano  
Escamillo: Ildar Abdrazakov  
Solo dancers: Maria Kowroski, Martin Harvey

Carmen isn't really a role for Anita Rachvelishvili.  She just sort of is Carmen.  She dances.  She washes her legs.  She flirts with everyone, even the ones she rejects.  She rolls around on the floor.  Yes, I know, we've seen all this before, but it just doesn't seem like it.  She is a natural, and even the voice is perfect.  I enjoyed her performance enormously.  We are discussing Bizet's Carmen live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera.

The Micaëla of Anita Hartig was excellent.  We were supposed to see her last season as Mimi when she called in sick.  I hope we get to see more of her.

I liked very much everything about Aleksandrs Antonenko's Don José, especially the dramatic parts in the second half, except the "Flower Song."  That has to be the worst "Flower Song" I've ever heard.  He wavered off pitch and seemed generally unsteady.

I liked the production again.  I think it works, though it makes the stage seem smaller than it is.  The conducting was enthusiastic, but he didn't seem to be good at coordinating the ends of arias with the singers.  They generally went ahead without him.

Our theater was pretty crowded.

P.S.  It is good to talk about Carmen.  It is an opera about men behaving badly.  I liked it that in this performance there was a man who stood at the top of the steps to help the women of the chorus climb out of their cellar.  It seemed very polite, even though he hugged and flirted with them.  Carmen didn't need this.  She strides out on her own.

Micaëla cringes from the soldiers grabbing and touching her, and remains basically unharmed by them.  When she is through with them, Carmen just pushes them off and insults them.  This turns out badly for her, and I won't actually say that she brings it on herself.  But she does seem to believe in her bad cards that predict her death.  Deep down she doesn't believe there is anything that will prevent her fate.  She knows that Don Jose will kill her.  She is Carmen and wishes only to be true to herself.

Carmen is a modern woman in a not modern world.  She insists on loving as she wishes, openly, rashly, passionately.  She does not allow herself to be controlled.  This production shows her as she is.  Two wonderful performances of profoundly contrasting emotions, Garanča and Rachvelishvili, show the complete spectrum of Carmen.  I warm to her as I have not done in the past.  She is not a fool.  She is powerful in the face of all.

The Scottish Opera

CONDUCTOR: Fabio Luisi
PRODUCTION: Adrian Noble
LIVE IN HD HOST: Anita Rachvelishvili

MACBETH: Željko Lučić (baritone)
BANQUO: René Pape (bass)
LADY MACBETH: Anna Netrebko (soprano)
DUNCAN, KING OF SCOTLAND: Raymond Renault
MALCOLM, DUNCAN’S SON: Noah Baetge (tenor)
MACDUFF, THANE OF FIFE: Joseph Calleja (tenor)

This performance of Verdi's Macbeth simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera is the same opera and the same production that we saw in 2008.  So why doesn't it feel like it?  Because it is about 100 times sexier.  For me Netrebko simply transformed the production.

There are at least two other Scottish operas besides Macbeth, the name you are not supposed to say aloud:  Lucia di Lammermoor and Handel's Ariodante.  There wasn't anything particularly Scottish in this production.  Perhaps the landscape might resemble a wooded part of Scotland.  It bothered me that there were no branches illustrating the movement of Birnam Wood.  In fact there didn't seem to be much relationship between the play and the set.

So much of this performance has been written about already that there is little I could add.  Anna was stunning, truly shocking.  There were lots of chairs.  I've never seen women carry their purses the way the witches did.  If there's a strap, don't they just hang it over their arm?  Perhaps they carried them like that so that they would be easy to open and let the lights shine out.  The witches had lights inside their purses.

There was only one thing I would criticize about Anna's performance--she is intensely self-confident for long stretches of the play and then is suddenly having nightmares about the blood on her hands.  Could we have seen this coming just a little?  Perhaps I am being nit picky.

Lučić was excellent, better than his Rigoletto.  There is a roughness to his voice that doesn't go with Rigoletto for me but was ideal for Macbeth. The entire cast was excellent, especially Rene Pape.

I was struck by how huge both the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are.  Luisi called the opera short, but we were out after 3 1/2 hours.  Except for the chorus, all the other roles are insignificant.  This is part of why the opera is so difficult.

I was pleased that Netrebko did not try to push into her chest voice.  In the really quite mad intermission interview she said that she would give herself 2 years on Lady Macbeth and then let her go.  I am hoping this is true.  There will probably be a DVD.

No one generates the sheer excitement and intensity that Anna Netrebko can.  She is the singer for our time.

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Prince Igor

Conductor Gianandrea Noseda
Production Dmitri Tcherniakov

Host Eric Owens

Cast

Prince Igor:  Ildar Abdrazakov
Prince Galitsky (Igor's wife's brother):  Mikhail Petrenko
Vladimir Igorevich (Igor's son):  Sergey Semishkur
Skula (deserter):  Vladimir Ognovenko
Yeroshka (deserter):  Andrey Popov
Yaroslavna (Igor's wife):  Oksana Dyka
Polovtsian Maiden:  Kiri Deonarine
Konchakovna (Khan Konchak's daughter):  Anita Rachvelishvili
Ovlur (Christian Polovtsian):   Mikhail Vekua
Khan Konchak (Polovtsian general):   Štefan Kocán
Yaroslavna’s Nurse:  Barbara Dever

My list says that I have seen Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor at the San Francisco Opera in 1996.  I don't remember.  There has been a massive effort to improve the theatrical viability of this opera and to alter the score to include only music by Borodin. 

Traditionally the scenes are:

Prologue--Igor's army leaves for battle.
Act I scene 1--Prince Galitsky's drunken bash.
Act I scene 2--Yaroslavna's chamber, news that Igor is defeated, enemy is approaching.
Act II--Singing and dancing in Polovtsian camp.
Act III--Igor and Vladimir are to escape, but Vladimir stays for Konchakovna.
Act IV--Igor returns home and is celebrated.

I am looking at the program for this performance live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD and it seems to be incorrect.  I will attempt to explain what happens.  The Prologue is as before, but it is followed by the scene of singing and dancing in the Polovtsian camp.  This is the famous Polovtsian dances and takes place in a field of red poppies.  It is Igor's reality and fantasy mixed.  The enemy general and his daughter are introduced, and she falls in love with Vladimir.

Act II in this version includes scenes where women of the village come to Yaroslavna to complain that Galitsky has abducted a girl from the village.  Then there is a drunken bash with Galitsky where he plans to overthrow the rule of Yaroslavna.  Then there is a scene when the city council meets, declares that Igor has been captured, his army killed and the enemy is advancing.  Galitsky tries to overthrow Yaroslavna, but is killed.

Then there is a scene where Ovlur tries to persuade Igor and Vladimir to escape, but Vladimir stays for Konchakovna.  This is Act III above, but does not appear in the handout. In the end Igor returns to a ruined city and encourages rebuilding.

I felt that these changes were successful, that a level of theatricality had been achieved and that Igor became central.  The choral work in this opera is spectacular.  But in either arrangement bad guys always seem to have more charisma, and Prince Galitsky is wonderfully nasty.

The singing was particularly enjoyable.  I especially liked Oksana Dyka and Anita Rachvelishvili, next season's Carmen.  Her Carmen will be wild.

Dmitri Tcherniakov talks about his production and what it means.  He tells that Igor has had a transforming experience, that he immediately starts in to reconstruct his land, that he wishes to turn his attention to peaceful, constructive purposes, but when we see the dialog on the screen we know that this isn't what he is saying.  He wants to go back to fighting.  This is why the audience is confused.  I don't think this opera will make it into standard repertoire. 

P.S.  All my reviews are a work in progress.  After the Oscars I want to point out the original field of red poppies:  the Wizard of Oz.  Of course, these are California poppies.

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