Gloriana

Stage director.....David McVicar
Conductor..........Ivor Bolton

Queen Elizabeth I........................Anna Caterina Antonacci
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex...Leonardo Capalbo
Frances, Countess of Essex..........Paula Murrihy
Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy...Duncan Rock
Penelope, Lady Rich...................Sophie Bevan
Sir Robert Cecil..........................Leigh Melrose
Sir Walter Raleigh......................David Soar
Henry Cuffe................................Benedict Nelson

This production on medici.tv of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana comes from Teatro Real de Madrid, 2018.  The opera was composed to honor the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.  The queen herself came to the first performance.  It looks as you wish it to.  The costumes are magnificent.

The relationship between Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex is well known.  Less well known is his rivalry with Lord Mountjoy.

There is a masque portraying Concord dancing.  I am fascinated to see that this female role is played by a man in drag.  Accurately in short.  All the dancers are guys.  It's fun.  All is to glorify the Queen who adores it.

The star of this production is Anna Catarina Antonacci whom I have seen in Carmen with Kaufmann, in La Ciociara by Marco Tutino in San Francisco, in Sancta Susanna by Paul Hindemith at the Paris Opera, and in La Voix humaine by Poulenc in San Francisco.  This is a wonderful variety of roles all performed by a great singing actress.  There is great range in her portrayals, and that certainly is true here as well.  Her Elizabeth is mature.

Here we see Essex and Mountjoy plotting treason against the Queen.  Other versions slant the story more in favor of Essex. I'm fascinated that with the inclusion of period musical forms Britten is trying to bring the past to us.  The music is still Benjamin Britten and not Elizabeth's time.  There is a gathering of the court for entertainment, and Essex has brought his wife dressed more beautifully than the Queen.  Elizabeth orders the women to change their attire and steals Frances's dress.  When everyone reappears, Elizabeth is wearing the beautiful dress which she declares too long.  It is surprising that at this moment she sends Essex off to Ireland.  The scene ends with yet another dance.

In the next scene Essex returns from Ireland offering a truce.  The Queen wanted victory, not a truce.  There is something stunning about this.  The use of musical forms to frame the scenes is very attractive.  Why have I never seen it before?  I feel they are trying to show the truth, very rare in an opera.

Billy Budd in San Francisco

Conductor: Lawrence Renes
Production: Michael Grandage *

Captain Vere, tenor: William Burden
Billy Budd, baritone: John Chest *
John Claggart, bass: Christian Van Horn
Mr. Redburn, baritone: Philip Horst
Mr. Flint, bass-baritone: Wayne Tigges
Mr. Ratcliffe, baritone: Christian Pursell
Red Whiskers, tenor: Robert Brubaker
Novice, tenor: Brenton Ryan
Maintop, tenor: Christopher Colmenero *
Squeak, tenor: Matthew O'Neill
Dansker, bass: Philip Skinner

There are now two operas based on the novels of Hermann Melville:  Billy Budd by Benjamin Britten and Moby Dick by Jake Heggie.  The San Francisco Opera last night performed the 1960 condensed version of Billy Budd.

In the program notes a date is assigned to the plot of this opera:  1797, within the decade after the French revolution.  These are members of the British navy aboard the HMS Indomitable. The officers are from more traditional sources, but it is their habit to stop merchant ships and take men from their crews to conscript them into the lower classes of the navy.   This is why they are so concerned about mutiny.  Billy Budd is conscripted in this way.  They ask him how old he is and he says he doesn't know.

Claggart becomes emotionally concerned with Billy, saying "Beauty, handsomeness, goodness."  He takes this personally and accuses Billy to the Captain of mutiny.  Billy becomes tongue tied and cannot defend himself, hitting Claggart instead.  Claggart dies, and Billy is hanged and thrown into the ocean.

The staging was marvelous.  The set is very functional for all the scenes.  I had only one trouble with it.  In operas with large casts, such as this one, the director must find a way to make the main characters stand out from the others.  The Captain is easy to find on the stage because he stands above the others.  Claggart is the very physically distinctive Christian Van Horn with his long face.  But Billy quickly disappears into the crowd in many scenes.  He could have more brilliantly blond hair, maybe.  Just saying.

There is a lot going on in this very busy opera.  I was reminded that I once had a rule:  never go to an opera with 3 baritones.  This would definitely be in that category. Britten's orchestration is brilliant and colorful, but he doesn't compose the voices so much as orchestrate them.  The chorus is very rumbly. The voices each seem to stay in a relatively small range, not at all what an opera singer generally desires.  I want vocal beauty and not merely visual beauty.  Extending the range would also help to create the impression of melody.

I am the only one complaining about this.  I felt that it was a significant production, but I wanted more.  Different singers might produce a different effect.

____________________________
I came down fairly heavy on Britten.  Additional thought has led me to conclude that fault may lie more with the specific performance.  Training might eliminate the rumbly sound.  I should also mention that I abandoned my 3 baritones rule after hearing a really good performance of Simon Boccanegra.
 

Albert Herring

Conductor Michael Rosewell
Director Liam Steel

Albert Herring Nick Pritchard
Superintendent Budd Matt Buswell
Sid Nicholas Morton
Nancy Angela Simkin
Emmie Catriona Hewitson
Lady Billows: Janis Kelly
Miss Wordsworth Natasha Day
Florence Pike Polly Leech
Mrs Herring Amy Lyddon
Cis Rowan Pierce
The Outsider Michael Taylor Moran
Mr Gedge Julien Van Mellaerts
Mr Upfold Joel Williams
Harry Max Todes

I have watched Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring presented by the Royal College of Music by way of Operavision.  This is Benjamin Britten's idea of comedy.  I think you have to be British.  It's very much an ensemble opera which makes it a good choice for a music school.

It is time to choose the Queen of May for the May Day celebration, and none of the current crop of young women are found suitable.  When widening the field of celebration, the council chooses Albert to be King of May because he just sells vegetables all day in his mother's shop.  As King he even wears a white dress as if he were a bride.  Albert's drink is spiked and he gets the hiccups.

A couple called Sid and Nancy enliven the scenes.  Are we amused that a young man is dressed up like a girl and declared to be saintly?  There's a lovely quartet toward the end when they all think he's dead.  The goings on in an English village seem mysterious to us I think.  They may have to abandon their dream of sinless youth.

I enjoyed the singing, but there are no arias.  Only Janis Kelly is a professional singer.

The Gondoliers

Conductor:  Anne-Marie Endres
Director:  Robert Vann

Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers, presented last night in Sacramento, is a new one for me.  Robert Vann, the director and portrayer of Luiz, pointed out that it is produced less often than other G&S works because it is a big show with a large cast.  The ladies announce that they are four and twenty when obviously there are only twelve of them.  No one minds this.

The plot is also complex.

From Spain

Duke:  Mike Baad
Duchess:  Kathryn Peperkorn
Casilda, their daughter:  Tiffany Patterson
Luiz, attendant (or where is he from?):  Robert Vann

From Venice

The Grand Inquisitor:  Tim Power
Marco Palmieri, Venetian Gondolier (tenor):  Anthony Tavianini
Gianetta, Contadina, his girl friend/wife (soprano):  Carley Neill
Giuseppe Palmieri, Venetian Gondolier (baritone):  Charlie Baad
Tessa, Contadina, his girl friend/wife (mezzo-soprano):  Paige Kelly
Misc. girls and gondoliers

From Barataria

Inez, the King's Foster-mother (contralto):  Karen Lyman

Here is an actual gondolier posing for this picture.  Isn't he dreamy?

Our gondoliers wore shirts very much like this.  The red and white striped shirts are to distinguish the two gondoliers the girls are fussing over.  Our opera did not include any gondolas.

Plot:  There are gondoliers and there are girls chasing after them.  However, only two of the gondoliers seem to hold interest--the Palmieri brothers.  It is fascinating how much they resemble the gondolier in the photograph.  The Palmieri brothers tell us they are only honorary gondoliers.

They are blindfolded and select.  The other girls pair up with the remaining gondoliers and everyone gets married.

The Duke, Duchess and their daughter Casilda from Spain show up looking for the Prince of Barataria, the man Casilda married when she was very young.  A young man named Luiz accompanies them carrying a snare drum, presumably to announce the arrival of the Duke and Duchess.  Luiz and Casilda have fallen in love.  The King of Barataria has died, and the new king must be found.  The Grand Inquisitor tells them the new king is one of the Palmieri brothers, but he doesn't know which.  The brothers decide to rule jointly.

Inez is found and tells who is the new King.  To produce the required happy ending only one of the characters can be the King of Barataria.  You must guess.

This was lively and entertaining and included no hit tunes whatsoever, unusual for a G&S opera.  It was well attended.

I want to thank Debbie Baad for the correct cast member names for the performance I saw on Friday.

George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence

?, Mortimer, son, Isabel, daughter, ?

George Benjamin | Conductor, Composer
Martin Crimp | Libretto
Katie Mitchell | Stage director

Stéphane Degout: King
Barbara Hannigan: Isabel, King's wife
Gyula Orendt: Gaveston, King's lover/Stranger
Peter Hoare: Mortimer, a courtier
Samuel Boden: Boy/Young King
Jennifer France: Witness 1/Singer 1/Woman 1
Krisztina Szabó: Witness 2/Singer 2/Woman 2
Andri Björn Robertsson: Witness 3/Madman

This is a free live stream from the Royal Opera House in London of George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence.  It's an historical plot about King Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327) who was deposed in a manner similar to what is shown here.

Serenade to Music

I thought to myself while leafing through lists in YouTube of Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music that Bernstein would completely understand this piece.  He understood perfectly the necessity of ecstasy.  The words are Shakespeare, of course.  "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank...."  I think I got it in one.

This new one is also very nice.


Now we can have both.

The Exterminating Angel

Conductor...............Thomas Adès
Production..............Tom Cairns

Edmundo De Nobile, host.......Joseph Kaiser
Lucía De Nobile, hostess......Amanda Echalaz

Guests
Leticia Maynar, guest of honor... Audrey Luna
Leonora Palma, flirts with Doctor Conde.....Alice Coote
Silvia De Ávila, sister of Francisco.........Sally Matthews
Francisco De Ávila, countertenor, brother of Silvia......Iestyn Davies
Blanca Delgado, pianist......Christine Rice
Alberto Roc, conductor.............Rod Gilfry
Beatriz, engaged to Eduardo..........Sophie Bevan
Eduardo, engaged to Beatriz..........David Portillo
Raúl Yebenes, explorer............Frédéric Antoun
Colonel Álvaro Gómez, Lucia's lover....David Adam Moore
Señor Russell...........Kevin Burdette
Doctor Carlos Conde.....John Tomlinson

Servants
Julio, stays behind.....Christian Van Horn
Lucas...................John Irvin
Enrique.................Ian Koziara
Pablo...................Paul Corona
Meni....................Mary Dunleavy
Camila..................Catherine Cook
Servant.................Andrea Coleman
Servant.................Marc Persing

Padre Sansón............Jeff Mattsey
Yoli, child.................Lucas Mann

The Metropolitan Opera live streamed The Exterminating Angel by Thomas Adès. The opera is based on the 1962 film by Luis Buñuel which I have never seen.  In the 60s there was a global movement in art movies of which this is a representative.

I didn't prepare for this opera, and that turned out to be fortuitous.  When the ending came, I was pleasingly surprised.  Many of the cast were in the premiere at Salzburg in 2016.

Some guests have been to a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor and are invited to an after party.  One of the guests, Leticia, performed Lucia in the opera.  Right away the servants begin to flee.  No explanation is offered.  Then after the dinner the guests find they cannot leave.  Again no explanation is offered.

Apparently Adès has been obsessed with this subject for some years and finally received permission.  He is a composer in the modernist style with screeching sopranos and jumpy melodic lines.  I don't find it particularly attractive.  I did enjoy seeing and hearing the Ondes Martenot which was shown in closeup being played.  There was a lot of drumming.  At times it seemed like a comedy.  It wasn't as grotesque as I had imagined.

Over the course of the opera Russell and Beatriz die.  The guests dig a hole in the floor and water comes up.  The brother and sister seem to be romantically attracted to each other.  An unknown amount of time passes.  There were live sheep at the beginning which were eaten when everyone was starving.  There was someone hovering in the air above one of the women who might have been the exterminating angel himself.

For no apparent reason everyone decided to repeat exactly what they did when they arrived, and this seemed to break the spell.  They could then leave as though nothing had happened.

This is supposed to be a great opera but there are far too many characters.  It did make me curious to see the movie.  Alice Coote thought it was a parable on life which is also entirely without explanation.  We are here.  We cannot leave.  We don't know why.  Forgive me if I have misquoted her intentions.

I am not likely to ever be a fan of Thomas Adès.  For me opera is about singing which never became interesting.  People admire his orchestration and that is both the virtue and the fault of this piece.  Instead of composing for singers, he has simply orchestrated them.  At least in The Tempest there was the charming music for Ariel, but I heard nothing here that I would wish to ever hear again.  I would advise any high soprano to refuse any offers to sing this.  It can't possibly be good for your voice.
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Patience in Sacramento

Friday night began the run of Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience from the Light Opera Theatre in Sacramento.

Conductor:  Anne-Marie Endres
Director:  Debbie Baad

Poets 

Reginald Bunthorne (A Fleshly Poet) — Charlie Baad 
Archibald Grosvenor (An Idyllic Poet) — Timothy Power

Rapturous Maidens 

The Lady Angela — Paige Kelly
The Lady Saphir — Rhonda Thomas
The Lady Saphir — Jadi Galloway
The Lady Ella — Franchesca Sonoyama
The Lady Jane — Tiffany Patterson
Patience (A Dairy Maid) — Kate Murphy

Officers of Dragoon Guards 

Colonel Calverley — Michael Baad
Major Murgatroyd — Kevin Branson
Major Murgatroyd — Roy Domoe Lieut.
The Duke of Dunstable — Anthony Tavianini

This show is all about outfits.  Dress like people from ancient England, and you will be perceived as a poet and adored.  Dress like a modern person, and you will disappear into the crowd.  Suitable young women pay no attention to the suitable young men in the Dragoon Guards and instead go off pining after silly poets in old fashioned outfits.  The young women wear old fashioned outfits too and sigh and moan.  There are patter songs.  Irrelevant names are tossed about.  Francesca da Rimini.

Before this appeared in my inbox, I had no idea it existed.  It is fun.  Try to see it.

Dido and Aeneas

Christopher Hogwood conductor
Wayne McGregor choreography, stage director

Lucy Crowe (Belinda)
Sarah Connolly (Dido)
Anita Watson (Second Woman)
Lucas Meachem (Aeneas)
Sara Fulgoni (Sorceress)
Eri Nakamura (First Witch)
Pumeza Matshikiza (Second Witch)
Iestyn Davies (Spirit)
Ji-Min Park (Sailor)

There is a film of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas on medici.tv which can be viewed through Amazon prime. I performed the spirit as a freshman in college and am always surprised by the level of detail I can remember.  Except now everyone does ornaments that are not in the score.  I doubt sincerely that they are extemporized.

Lucy Crowe and Sarah Connolly are worth the visit.  One of the odd features of this performance is that the First Witch and Second Witch are portrayed as Siamese twins joined at the side. 

Since I left college, I have only seen this opera staged by choreographers.  It would be nice to see it done as an opera.
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Flight

Conductor:  Nicole Paiement
Director:  Brian Staufenbiel

Refugee (countertenor).... Tai Oney
Controller (soprano) .........Nikki Einfeld
Bill (tenor) ........................Chaz'men.Williams-Ali
Tina, Bill's wife (soprano). Amina Edris
Stewardess (mezzo-soprano) Maya Yahav Gour
Older Woman (contralto) ...Catherine Cook
Steward (baritone) ............Hadleigh Adams
Minskman (baritone) ...........Eugene Brancoveanu
Minskwoman (mezzo-soprano) ...Renée Rapier
Immigration Officer (bass-baritone) ..Philip Skinner

Powder her Face

Photo by Cory Weaver. 

👍🏻
Music Director and Conductor: Mary Chun
Stage Director: Elkhanah Pulitzer

The Duchess: Laura Bohn
The Maid, and other characters: Emma McNairy
The Duke and other characters: Hadleigh Adams
The Electrician and other characters: Jonathan Blalock

One of the operas for the summer festival of  West Edge Opera is Thomas Adès' Powder her Face, a purportedly biographical opera about Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll. The composer waited until her death in 1993 to dig up all this old dirt--the opera dates from 1995.  Perhaps it's necessary to be British to fully enjoy this.  Everyone but the duchess had very light blond hair.

I'm going to call this as I see it.  This was like two different operas:  the serious, intensely emotional performance of Laura Bohn, something I might possibly call a masterpiece, and everything else.  Let's just say I don't normally watch porn.

Fake sex is only marginally interesting.  I tried to figure out what about the opera suggested the sex.  The judge comes out and says, "Order, Silence, Justice."  Then he says a bunch of other stuff, and then repeats the first three words.  The first time he says them they are drawn out and kind of wavy, but the second time he just says them.  So the first time the wavy music is used to express someone doing fellatio on him under his judge's robes.  So fioratura is sexual.  This goes with the Lucia I saw recently.  Ho hum.

I don't think I would want to see this opera again, but I'm sort of a fuddy-duddy.

Laura Bohn was magnificent.

Rachmaninoff at the Sacramento Philharmonic

The program for the Sacramento Philharmonic included other things, too.  The conductor for the evening was Case Scaglione.  His first name means houses in Italian.

Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Pieces.  I think to effectively present these pieces the Philharmonic would need to up their game a bit.  To make their effect they depend very much on sound.

Igor Stravinsky's Symphony in C Major.  Frankly I don't know why they would choose to play this piece, since it is extremely uninteresting.  To me anyway.

Then we came to Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with Behzod Abduraimov at the piano.  It was worth waiting for.  Apparently Behzod is a rising star.  He lit into Rachmaninoff's most famous piece like there was no tomorrow.  Conductor and pianist did an excellent job of maintaining coordination throughout the concerto.  Every movement was a gem, exciting, dynamic, thrilling.  And the Philharmonic rose to meet him.  For one brief shining moment they were thrilling, too.

We go to hear concerts for moments like this.  You never know when it will happen.  Thank you.

Resurrection in Sacramento

The Sacramento Philharmonic revival began last night with Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony Resurrection.  The entire season will use guest conductors, and at this first concert we had Andrew Grams, who will work also the concert October 17, 2016.

The concert began with a piece called Concerto Grosso by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  A concerto grosso usually is a piece with a group of soloists who alternate with a larger group of players.  I saw no hint of that in this performance.  The piece is all strings with a section for amateurs who play only open strings.  It didn't rise above pleasant.

But we weren't here for that.  We wanted Mahler 2, and we got it.  This was a dynamic, exciting performance of the piece which established Mahler as a composer.  We were close to the timpani and got the full effect.

A new thing for me happened when a cellist broke a string.  The whole concert paused after the first movement so he could replace it.  My favorite part, of course, is the Urlicht in the 4th movement, here sung beautifully by Kelly O'Connor.  The reception was loud and enthusiastic. 

The revived Sacramento Philharmonic was said to be working from a balanced budget.  This plus the return to standard repertoire is all very welcome.

Written on Skin from ROH

 angels, humans

Conductor:   George Benjamin.
Production:   Katie Mitchell

Agnès:              Barbara Hannigan (soprano)
Protector:         Christopher Purves (bass-baritone)
First Angel/Boy:      Bejun Mehta (countertenor)
Second Angel/Marie:  Victoria Simmonds (mezzo-soprano)
Third Angel/John:     Allan Clayton (tenor)

Part I of the Barbara Hannigan film festival is Written on Skin, an opera by George Benjamin based on a tale from the Decameron by Boccaccio.  It was recorded at the Royal Opera Covent Garden March, 2013.  A constant presence in the story are angels from the 21st century.

I'm sorry.  This can't be Boccaccio.   It isn't about tattoos either.  It is instead the flaw in theology.  God writes a story on our bodies and we are forced to live it.  I am sitting here by the screen shouting "Kill him."  That certainly never happened before.  She doesn't.  She never does, it seems.  We are what he has written us to be.

She shouts that the taste will never leave her and a glass harmonica plays.  Even Lucia's glass harmonica is not so frightening and strange.

It doesn't seem suitable to criticize this.  It is abstract, profound, much more than I imagined it could be.  See it for yourself.  I recommend the DVD so you can follow along with the text.

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Brian Jagde at Mondavi

Brian Jagde claimed that last night at Mondavi Center was his first full recital as a tenor.  I have to say he started at the top.  What exactly does that mean?  Did he used to be a baritone?

It was announced that he was somewhat under the weather, something that seemed only a small problem in the slower, softer selections.  He wanted to sing anyway.  He called the selections "deep."  I thought that perhaps he had chosen repertoire that he truly loved.  I always advise this.  Love the music you are singing and sing it with all the love you have.

The first group was a set of German Lieder, one each by Schubert (the famous serenade), Schumann (Stille Traenen), Brahms (Mainacht), Wolf and Mahler (Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen).  I love all these songs, and he was not afraid to allow his voice to soar to almost operatic proportions.  Perhaps he's been listening to a certain German who does not hesitate to do this.

Next he performed the Holy Sonnets of John Donne by Benjamin Britten.  These are true sonnets on deeply religious subjects, rare in the world of great poetry and even rarer in the world of classical recitals.  Brian brought the required serious intensity to these wonderful songs which were completely unfamiliar to me.

Next he did 5 songs of Rachmaninov and ended with 4 songs by Richard Strauss, Traum durch die Daemmerung, Breit Ueber mein Haupt, Allerseelen (a personal favorite) and Zueignung (another favorite).  He sang big and was most successful when he did so.

His accompanist Craig Terry laid his music down on the piano instead of using the stand, creating the impression that he wasn't using music.  He seemed to be having a lot of fun and enjoying how much the audience was loving it.

The first encore was dedicated to Barbara Jackson who sat up high near the stage.  The hall is named after her.  He sang for her "Recondit armonia" from Tosca, and it was glorious.  This is what he really sings, of course.

The second encore was "Be my love."  Let's just say I think you need actually to be Mario Lanza.  It was a bit anticlimactic.

This was the most fun I've had at a recital in a long time.  Bravo.  Sing what you love.

The Minotaur

Someone persuaded me to take an interest in Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur.  Someone at the New York Times liked it.  So I bought a DVD.

The Minotaur (Asterios):  John Tomlinson, bass
Theseus:  Johan Reuter, baritone
Ariadne:  Christine Rice, mezzo-soprano
Snake Priestess:  Andrew Watts, countertenor
Innocents:  Rebecca Bottone, Pumeza Matshikiza, Wendy Dawn Thompson, Christopher Ainslie, Tim Mead
Hiereus:  Philip Langridge, tenor
Ker (death spirit, sister of the fates, in this production vulture):  Amanda Echalaz, soprano

The plot is the incidents that took place just before Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.  The Minotaur is in the labyrinth, and his half sister Ariadne looks out for him, makes sure people sent to Crete to provide dinner for the Minotaur find their way into the labyrinth.  The Minotaur doesn't care for bread.

We are 45 minutes into the opera before Asterios appears and 57 minutes in before he sings anything.  If you like opera as orchestral tone poem with only incidental singing, then you will like this.  If, like me, for you opera is about the singing and you don't really care what is going on at the same time, you will hate it.

The Minotaur groans as he kills his victims in full view of the audience.  The vultures come in afterward to eat what remains of them, screeching hideously.

Sorry.  No singing, no opera.  Think how much better we might enjoy this if a troupe of comedia del arte performers came in after say 20 minutes.

I do wish to comment on the orchestral part of the opera, though.  Modernism, the music of Bartok, Stravinsky and those guys, has died here.  We in America, represented by Glass, Adams, Heggie, have gone on to minimalism and other less harsh styles.  In Europe modernism appears to be alive and ....  I was going to say well, but, you know....  Birtwistle and Ades, and perhaps even Saariaho are very much modernists.  Our paths have forked.  I would need to conduct research to discover which path is the more successful.  The New York Times critics evaluate the fork by ignoring our half.  If it doesn't sound like late Stravinsky, it isn't classical music, apparently. 
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Benjamin Britten's Birthday

November 22 was the 100th birthday of Benjamin Britten.  There are some complete Britten operas on YouTube if you are interested:

Death in Venice  You have probably not seen this--this version is a film.

Turn of the Screw pt1, pt2 (88)

Billy Budd  This version has Peter Pears in it.

Peter Grimes (84)

A midsummer night's dream A charming opera.

Albert Herring  (91) This version is from Glyndebourne.  I should definitely watch it since this is the only one I haven't seen.

The Rape of Lucretia  The main character is a contralto, but he distorts the meaning of the story.

Owen Wingrave  

The numbers in parenthesis are the standing in the 100 most performed operas list--a remarkable feat for a modernist.

War

Ian Bostridge, Anna Netrebko and Thomas Hampson

This photograph will be from the performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem at the Salzburg Festival this summer and not from the new recording with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academia Nazionalle di Santa Cecilia in Rome and Antonio Pappano conducting.  You can listen to it here, I don't know for how long.

This is a wonderful, deeply emotional performance.  I know I've heard this work before but I don't think I knew it was this beautiful.  Each is perfect for the part, and Anna Netrebko is especially gorgeous, by turns dramatic, lyrical and sweet.

Perhaps it is the right thing for today.  We Americans have narrowly escaped our pathetic, made up political crisis which appears to have been nothing more than a game of chicken.  Think about the larger vision of life. We have music to enrich our souls instead of politics to maim us.
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Alex Ross

I read Alex Ross on the staging of The Tempest and Un Ballo in Maschera, and he had some interesting points.

I was interested in the idea that the productions last year looked better in the simulcast than they did in house.  A film of an opera is often very different from the impression it makes in house.  For one thing, directors often put things on the side of the stage that are not visible in the film.  In the Munich Lohengrin the hero sleeps off camera for an extended period, visible to the in house audience but not to the film.  Filming focuses on the important details and often ignores the bigger picture.

I don't know which of last season's productions he is referring to.  I liked Flute and Enchanted Island on the screen.  I have seen Ernani, Satyagraha and Walkure both on the screen and in the house and thought they worked about equally well in both places.  Walkure is just pictures in a foreshortened space both on the screen and in the house.

If I have 9 windows arranged in three rows, such as is the case in Don Giovanni, on the screen I will see each window one at a time in close-up with occasional wide shots of the full set.  In the house I will see all 9 windows all the time.  Perhaps in the house one prefers that the sets are in motion.

Ross talks about claustrophobia when the sets are close in and shorten the depth of the stage, such as in the Lepage Ring and Ballo.  Singers tend to love this because they can feel their voices reflecting out into the audience instead of disappearing into the flies.  The illusion for the Ring worked better on the screen because you could not see the pictures projected on the actors' faces which were obvious in the house.

I thought that the production for The Tempest made for some interesting pictures but did nothing to clarify the plot.

I was fascinated by the picture that accompanied Ross' article in the New Yorker.  It showed Zajick as Ulrica in an aqua blue dress such as a relatively lower-class woman might wear while Blythe in our version was dressed in upper-middle-class black.  She also pulled different things out of her purse.  Hmm.  Perhaps the other version makes more sense.  After all, she is reading the fortunes for sailors on leave, and not just upper-class women like Amelia.

His complaints about Dmitri are the same for anything he does.  Renée Fleming in Onegin brought him out of himself, but this is a rare event.  He is a sharp contrast to Marcello.

I liked the flamboyance of the production for Ballo, the subdued palate combined with the outrageous Oscar, the sophisticated Ulrica with her skull, the king's disguises where he always still looked like Marcello Alvarez, the radical changes of mood from scene to scene.  In fact I felt these mood changes clarified the plot as never before.  This is what matters most to me in a production.

Perhaps I should go back to reading Alex Ross.

The Tempest

Conductor...............Thomas Adès
Production..............Robert Lepage

Prospero................Simon Keenlyside
Miranda.................Isabel Leonard
Ariel...................Audrey Luna
Caliban.................Alan Oke
Ferdinand...............Alek Shrader
Stefano.................Kevin Burdette
Trinculo................Iestyn Davies
Antonio.................Toby Spence
Sebastian...............Christopher Feigum
Gonzalo.................John Del Carlo
King of Naples..........William Burden

Today was the simulcast of Thomas Adès's The Tempest from the Metropolitan Opera.  This opera lies much closer to Shakespeare's play of the same name than did The Enchanted Island, which we all loved very much.  It's modern, generally like the clip in the previous post and the one above.

There is Prospero, well sung by a tattooed Simon Keenlyside, who is a bitter old man who has been living on an island for 12 years with his books on magic, his daughter Miranda, sung by Isabel Leonard, his slave spirit Ariel, sung by Audrey Luna, and the former King of the island Caliban, sung by Alan Oke.  They are a pathetic group.  Caliban is an ugly monster who stalks Miranda and hopes to marry her.  Ariel is a slave to Prospero and has been promised freedom at some point.

That's two baritones, a mezzo-soprano and a coloratura soprano.  A very strange coloratura soprano.  Ms Luna has an incredible whistle register which is where the part of Ariel mostly lies.  The Queen of the Night in Flute just has her occasional leaps to high F's, but Ariel's part goes to a high G and hangs around above a high C for extended stretches.  I've never heard anything like it.  It was well and enthusiastically done, but gee.  In one spot she sings "Bow wow, bow wow."  Ariel is made of air.  Perhaps it makes an odd kind of sense.  This is the only thing about the opera that draws your attention to the singing. 

Prospero has received news that those who banished him to this island, the King of Naples and Prospero's brother Antonio, are passing by in a ship.  His sources are presumed to be magical.  He commands Ariel to sink their boat and bring them to the island.  Prospero has his revenge and everyone is happy at the end.  In their miserable, sniveling ways.  Except his precious daughter Miranda has fallen in love with the King's son Ferdinand.

The music is all like the sample.  Played by the fabulous Metropolitan Opera orchestra, it makes a different impression than my previous encounter.  The general impression is of disintegrated fragments of harmony and phrase.  There isn't much in the way of flow.  However, it has its own distinctive sound.

The text is almost Shakespeare, but not.  We hear Miranda declare "O brave new world" in the right place.  But why couldn't they have used:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

instead of the prose version?  As part of Prospero's revenge, Ferdinand, sung by Alek Shrader, is told that his father has died in the shipwreck.  We get something more modern sounding and not at all poetical, though it generally rhymes.  How does one manage that?  There is no antique vocabulary.

Robert Lepage was more suited to producing The Tempest than he had been for The Ring, perhaps because as a modern opera it could be performed by young people capable of swinging from chandeliers and falling through holes in the floor.  It didn't always make sense, but it looked good, worked fine and made the performances more interesting.

We got to the end and felt little enthusiasm, either in our theater or in the Met audience.  I managed a bravo for Keenlyside who was really quite good.
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