Santa Fe Opera 2022 Season

 

The Santa Fe Opera has announced their season for the summer of 2022.  This looks like a full season to me.  With works by Rossini, Verdi and Wagner it looks like a very ambitious season to me.  The casts include some wonderful American singers.

Carmen by Bizet  July 1 - August 27

Isabel Leonard, Mezzo-soprano, Carmen; Bryan Hymel, Tenor, Don José (July); Michael Fabiano, Tenor, Don José (August); Michael Sumuel, Bass-baritone, Escamillo; Sylvia D'Eramo, Soprano, Micaëla; Santa Fe Opera Music Director Harry Bicket conducts.

The Barber of Seville by Rossini July 2 - August 26  

Emily Fons, Mezzo-soprano, Rosina; Jack Swanson, Tenor, Count Almaviva; Joshua Hopkins, Baritone, Figaro; Kevin Burdette, Bass, Dr. Bartolo; Ryan Speedo Green, Bass-baritone, Don Basilio (August); Iván López-Reynoso conducts.

Falstaff by Verdi   July 16 - August 25 

Quinn Kelsey, Baritone, Falstaff; Alexandra LoBianco, Soprano, Alice Ford;  Roland Wood, Baritone, Ford;  Elena Villalón, Soprano, Nannetta; Eric Ferring, Tenor, Fenton; Ann McMahon Quintero, Mezzo-Soprano, Dame Quickly; Paul Daniel conducts. 

Tristan und Isolde by Wagner  July 23 -  August 22

Simon O'Neill, Tenor, Tristan; Tamara Wilson, Soprano, Isolde; Jamie Barton, Mezzo-soprano, Brangäne; Nicholas Brownlee, Bass-baritone, Kurwenal; Eric Owens, Bass-baritone, King Marke; David Leigh, Bass, King Marke (August 11); James Gaffigan conducts.

M. Butterfly by Huang Ruo  July 30 -  August 24  

Kangmin Justin Kim, Countertenor, Song Liling; Mark Stone, Baritone, René Gallimard; Hongni Wu, Mezzo-soprano, Comrade Chin | Shu Fung; Kevin Burdette, Bass, Manuel Toulon | Judge; Joshua Dennis, Tenor, Marc; Carolyn Kuan conducts.

Santa Fe Opera Announcement

 

The Santa Fe Opera has announced its season for 2021.  There was much conversation about resisting COVID19, which I will not repeat.  So here is the list.

• Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro.  The production is by Laurent Pelly.  Harry Bicket will conduct. 
  

• The world premier of Corigliano's The Lord of Cries with a libretto by Mark Adamo.  James Darrah will provide the production.  Johannes Debus will conduct.  This will star Anthony Roth Costanzo and Susanna Phillips.  It seems to be a joining of Euripides and Bram Stoker.  It sounds like fun.
  

• Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin has Alessandro Talevi as the producer.  Nicholas Carter will conduct.  Nicole Car will portray Tatiana and her husband Etienne Dupuis will sing Onegin. 
  

• Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream done in a fantasy production by Netia Jones.  She has imagined it in the specific surroundings of the Crosby Theater in New Mexico.  It sounds exciting.  Harry Bicket will conduct.  Erin Morley will sing Tytania.
  

• Angel Blue in concert.  John Fiore will conduct the orchestra.
  

Harry Bicket is the music director of the Santa Fe Opera.  This film played with the announcement.

Church of Chatter

They called it the Church of Beethoven because every Sunday morning they have a concert at The Kosmos at 1715 5th street.    The space doesn't really look like a church.  There was a coffee shop on one side.

I went for the program.

"At the River" (1916) by Charles Ives, an arrangement for violin and piano of one of Ives' songs.  (I sang this in college.)  It's one of those pieces where Ives changes a hymn into something unexpected.

Chaconne (1998) from The Red Violin by John Corigliano.  This was a very enjoyable selection in neo-romantic style from the sound track of the movie.  I have no idea if it followed the Baroque form for chaconne.  I wasn't paying enough attention.

Poet Bill Nevins, who teaches at UNM, read selections from his recently published book Heartbreak Ridge.

Two minutes of silence.

Sonata No 2 for Violin and Piano (1919) by Charles Ives.
I    Autumn:  Adagio maestoso - Allegro moderato
II   In the Barn:  Presto - Allegro moderato
III  The Revival:  Largo - Allegretto

The artists were David Felberg, violin, and Pamela Viktoria Pyle, piano.  They were both enthusiastic players of this excellent exciting music.  I have loved the work of Charles Ives for many years, and found the intensity of their playing transformative.  It should never be less than this.  David managed to break a few bow strings even.

Coffee, poetry, music, silence.  And no chatter during the playing.  As I always do, I tried to start up a conversation, but it didn't work this time.  Try this if you are ever in Albuquerque.

Chatter

Chatter is an odd name for a chamber orchestra, but there you are. Perhaps in Albuquerque this is not odd. They used to be called the Church of Beethoven, but did not wish to be called "The ensemble that used to be called the Church of Beethoven" when they lost rights to the name.

Chatter gave a concert in the Albuquerque Art Museum last night in the same space as a Christo exhibit. When I was in New York for The Gates, I loved it, but Christo as just photographs and drawings is less than spectacular. Maybe it's for nostalgia. It turned out to be an excellent performance space: no echo, easy to hear, not too loud. Even the synthesizer wasn't too loud.

A synthesizer in Mahler 4? We heard it in an arrangement for chamber ensemble done in 2007 by Klaus Simon. This was in turn based on a similar arrangement by Arnold Schoenberg which undoubtedly did not include synthesizer. This arrangement seriously reduces the strings and winds to one player per section. I sat behind the piano and synthesizer.

It was lovely but different. Mahler loves to make interesting sounds with combinations of winds and percussion. The interesting sounds were still there, but the much smaller string section moved the sound ideal from late Romantic closer to the sound ideal of Schoenberg. Transparency of texture is a feature of this style. Synthesizer fills in some of the thinning of texture when it becomes excessive but the wind players predominate. The soprano was Hannah Stephens. I enjoyed the whole performance.

The program notes seemed to be taken as is from Wikipedia, except when they were explaining that Mahler was forbidden by the Nazis, they left out that this was because Mahler was Jewish. It can't have been for anything about the music.

Frédéric Chaslin resigns

SANTA FE, N.M. -- Santa Fe Opera chief conductor Frédéric Chaslin has resigned and opera officials say a search for his successor will start in the fall.

Opera General Director Charles Mackay said Tuesday that Chaslin was leaving because he wants to focus on composing, and has a busy schedule of concerts and a recording project as music director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

The opera has finished this year's season.

Chaslin, who also is a pianist, was named chief conductor in 2010 and debuted with the opera in 2009 with a production of Verdi's "La Traviata." He was born and lives in Paris.

[Recently he has conducted Faust, Tosca and Maometto II.  This story is from the AP. ]

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/28/3783646/santa-fe-operas-chief-conductor.html#storylink=cpy

More Gossip

Three of our operas were also attended by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  She came with an entourage of US marshals.  We weren't allowed to leave until they were all gone.  She's extremely tiny.  It rained on those same three days.  Coincidence?

Judith Weir was commissioned to write Miss Fortune for the 2014 season, and while we were there it was cancelled and replaced with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the first opera by Huang Ruo.

Now that I am home I have spent some time fixing the spelling and adding a few additional comments to my reviews from Santa Fe. 

Next Year at Santa Fe 2013

War Horses:

La Traviata
This is a revival of the Natalie Dessay Laurent Pelly production reviewed here.   This time around it will star Brenda Rae and Michael Fabiano.

 
Marriage of Figaro will star Susanna Phillips as La Contessa.

Schon wieder Rossini--La Donna del Lago will star Joyce DiDonato and Lawrence Brownlee.  She has triumphed in Paris, Milan and Geneva in this role, and Santa Fe has aced out the other American companies for this performance.  Does it help that she lives in Santa Fe?  Sorry.  More insider gossip.  I will have to see this if I can.  [Schon wieder means already again.  For some reason I could not explain you say "schon wieder" quite a lot and almost never "already again."]

The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein by Offenbach is an operetta which will be sung in French with English spoken dialog.  The Duchess will be sung by Susan Graham.

This leaves the new opera Oscar by Theodore Morrison, a composer with whom I am unacquainted.  It will star David Daniels and is about Oscar Wilde.  One of our Road Scholar colleagues has attended a run-through of the first act and enjoyed it.

Arabella

At the Santa Fe Opera, our last opera for the summer was Strauss' Arabella with these two stars:  Mark Delevan as Mandryka and Erin Wall as Arabella.  Musically they were extremely well matched.  Mark has a big beautiful voice and projects well the quality of a gentleman from the country.

Set in Vienna, Arabella begins with a fortune teller who predicts that someone will come for Arabella from far away.  She asks if there is another daughter--a very intuitive fortune teller.  Adelaide, Arabella's mother, confesses.  Zdenko is really Zdenka (sung by Heidi Stober) disguised as a boy.  The fortune teller predicts that an officer will cause confusion.  Zdenka immediately knows that this is Matteo (sung by Zach Borichevsky) who loves Arabella and is loved by Zdenka.

Mandryka is clearly the stranger from afar, and they fall instantly in love.

At the party for carnival the next day Mandryka sees Zdenko give Matteo the key to Arabella's room and immediately becomes jealous.  No one suspects that it is Zdenka who goes to bed with Matteo and not Arabella.

Arabella decides to forgive Mandryka because how was he to know that this young man with her bedroom key to hand out was really her sister with her own agenda?  Anyone could be confused.  The production is ambiguous about Matteo's reaction to all this.  In fact the ending of the opera is a bit lame.  It would hardly do for Arabella to stab herself like Anna or leap off the top of the hotel like Tosca.  Would it?

Conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, this entire opera was completely permeated with the Strauss style.  It was a joy.

We didn't have quite as much behind the scenes gossip as last year, but we did learn that Erin Wall is ... ahem... five months along?  We didn't guess.

Maometto II

This was the world premiere of the new critical edition of Rossini's Maometto Secondo to be published next year.  In his liner notes Dr. Philip Gossett goes out on a limb and says, "...Maometto II is one of the greatest serious operas written during the 19th century."

In my youth there was no serious Rossini in the repertoire.  I feel especially blessed to be living in the era of Rossini revival.

I thought I detected the Gossett touch in this performance--not just in the perfection of the score but also in the ornamentation of the singers.  And sure enough, he was here helping with the preparation.  And for me what is the Gossett touch?  Ornamentation suitable for each voice and powerful self-confidence in its execution.

The odd thing about Maometto is all the ensembles.  By 1820 we are living in the dying ends of opera seria, a form that is more pure in Handel, a time when da capo arias are almost the whole thing.  In Maometto II everyone gets an aria, Anna gets a lot more, but that still leaves a lot of ensembles. 

It is a monumental opera, more like something by Verdi and not at all the kind of opera usually taken on by Santa Fe.  This season the excellent chorus is especially prominent.

This opera requires four magnificent singers, and it got them.  My fellow bloggers, who have already come and gone, seemed critical of these singers.  Bah humbug!  They were all wonderful.

At the top is Luca Pisaroni as Maometto.  According to Wikipedia he is from Venezuela but moved to Italy when he was 4.  That's Italian enough for me.  I also understand that he is Thomas Hampson's son in law.  Hampson was in our audience.

In the picture above we have our other three artists.  Left is Patricia Bardon as Calbo, a contralto almost in the Ewa Podleś tradition.  This part is wickedly difficult with lots of notes on either extreme of the range, and she handled it well.

Center is the magnificent Leah Crocetto as Anna, an individual fanatically devoted to duty.  In one night I am suddenly a fan.  It is a very long and difficult role which Leah executed with increasing assurance.  Right is the tenor Bruce Sledge as Erisso.  He was also excellent.  I stood for Leah.

There is a glaring flaw in this production.  At the end Maometto faces stage left and Anna faces stage right.  This puts Maometto's sword on his upstage side, so when Anna uses it to stab herself, this is completely invisible to the audience.  Obviously if you reverse where they are standing, all this changes.  We were warned.

Thank you for this wonderful experience.

Tosca at Santa Fe

This picture in a somewhat wider and more decrepit version is the decoration for Act II of Tosca at the Santa Fe Opera.  Its title is "Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne" by Annibale Carracci, and it is indeed in the Pallazzo Farnese in Rome.  Only there it's on the ceiling while here it's on the wall.  A lot of that sort of thing goes on in this production.  (Please note the tie-in to Dionysus in King Roger.  This cannot be a coincidence.)

 
This shot shows the inside of the church dome with Cavaradossi's painting lying on the floor for Act I.  People walk all over it.  Bizarre.  And who are these lovely people?  Brian Jagde sang Cavaradossi and  Amanda Echalaz was Tosca, both big soaring, romantic Puccini singers.  Amanda was best in the intense scenes, and I liked very much her "Vissi d'arte." 

Brian is a replacement for the arranged singer.  I knew the name sounded very familiar.  He has been an Adler Fellow for 3 years, and he just won Operalia (I even managed to remember this.)  He needs to work this role into his voice more completely before he sings it in San Francisco in November.

The third person in this production was Thomas Hampson as Scarpia.  He is very sophisticated and casual about his evilness.  A lot of women think Hampson is very handsome, so what exactly is Tosca's problem?  We may never know the answer.  He died with a lot of flailing around.  He was booed in the bows and made a comical gesture--Moi?

Opera productions of the most popular operas become like established rituals.  The picture hangs here, Scarpia dies here, Tosca jumps here, but occasionally it is interesting to see something slightly different.  It is nice not to have to explain the opera.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]

Roger

I have now listened to three different people try to explain Karol Szymanowsky's [Shim-on-OFF-sky] King Roger (composed 1918-1924) to no avail.

I'm going to give it a shot.  First off there is what you see.

Byzantine
We begin in a church service with beautiful choral singing and bright royal costumes.  The Shepherd arrives talking about his non-Christian god and the priests and congregation want to kill him.  Only Queen Roxana speaks on his behalf.  The three characters visible in the above picture are Shepherd (sung by tenor William Burden), King Roger (sung by baritone Mariusz Kwiecien), and Roxana (sung by soprano Erin Morley).

Arab
We are in King Roger's royal chambers.  The Shepherd continues to preach his gospel of Dionysus and everyone seems to be coming over to his side.  There is an orgy.  Roger tries to chain the Shepherd, but he easily breaks free.

Greek
The scene takes place in a ruined Greek temple.  The Shepherd appears in fuzzy pants and looks a bit like a satyr, the servants of Dionysus.  Roger has a spiritual awakening and rises to greet the rising sun.

Got that?  No, I thought not.  I'm not sure it is possible to understand this opera at all.

So here's my theory:  Szymanowsky wrote an opera about things he liked.  He liked Sicily and went there often.  At some point he heard about the medieval King Roger II of Sicily with his uncharacteristic religious tolerance.  He liked Nietsche's The Birth of Tragedy which is about counterbalancing influences of Apollo and Dionysus in Greek tragedy.

He ignored time and space and mixed all this together in an incomprehensible libretto with the help of one of his relatives.  They didn't mind that it made little sense.  Each person can make his own interpretation.  An explanation that focused strictly on Roger might be more comprehensible, but ambiguity is not altogether unpleasing.

Szymanowsky was a composer and may be regarded as more successful in that area.  We discussed the composers who may have influenced him and mentioned Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky.  For my ears I definitely heard what I lovingly call Movie Music.  The combination of a world-wide depression and the beginning of talkies brought a lot of European composers to America and American films.  Alfano, Korngold, guys like that.  The specific details would vary from composer to composer, but the general style is very similar.  I call the style Movie Music because it is seldom heard today outside that medium.  King Roger will never make the 100 most performed operas list.

The performance was marvelous.  Szymanowsky could hardly have asked for more.  Kwiecien was fabulous as King Roger, and Erin Morley was simply incredible as Roxana with her soaring, mysterious singing.  The orchestra played this difficult score brilliantly.  It's all atmosphere and is over in 90 minutes.  This was the last performance, so everyone did their best.

The Pearl Fishers at Santa Fe

"If we'd known the music was going to be so beautiful, we would have worked harder on the libretto."

These are the librettists of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers speaking. It was wonderful to see this outdoor opera in this outdoor setting. The sky in the photo is the real sky.

The plot is an odd love triangle: Zurga and Nadir love each other, and both of them love Leila, who is a priestess and sworn to chastity. Now, for most species the girl just says, "I like that one," and it's all over. For humans it's a lot harder. Zurga is the king and hates it that Leila has chosen Nadir. Zurga only lets them off because it turns out Leila once saved his life. Up until then he still wanted to kill them both.

Has Nadir been following Leila around all these years, or has perhaps Leila been following Nadir? One or the other is likely.

The production does a good job of creating the atmosphere of mystery and secrecy surrounding Leila, the mysterious priestess who gradually transitions to a private person. The production ends ambiguously with Zurga standing on the unlit pyre and Nourabad standing menacingly off to the side.

The fourth character in this opera, so to speak, is the chorus of the pearl fishers. At the Santa Fe Opera the chorus is made up of the apprentices, and they can really blast it out. They added a lot of intensity and excitement.

Nicole Cabell was lovely as Leila and sang with a lot of nuance. This made me feel anxious to hear her in San Francisco next season in I Capuletti. Eric Cutler is very large for a tenor, and as Nadir he is made to look a lot like Indiana Jones. We can see why Leila goes for him. Christopher Magiera sings Zurga the new king of the pearl fishers. Individually they are fine, but they don't particularly go well together.

The music of The Pearl Fishers if very beautiful and atmospheric and is what brings anyone to this opera.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1850-70]

Interviews at the Santa Fe Opera

These interviews about the 2012 season have been provided by the Santa Fe Opera.

The Pearl Fishers by Bizet

This interview with Nicole Cabell cannot be embedded.

Maometto II by Rossini


 
This interview with Dr. Philip Gossett cannot be embedded.  They have chosen the Naples version with the tragic ending in Dr. Gossett's new version.  At home I have an unwatched DVD with the happy ending.

King Roger by Szymanowski



Arabella by Strauss

This interview with Sir Andrew Davis cannot be embedded.

I am here because I simply could not resist the selection of repertoire.  I've only seen Arabella on DVD and have not seen Maometto II or King Roger at all.

News

Joyce DiDonato was on TV last night, but it was a documentary and they talked over her singing.  Kansas City should be proud of their new symphony hall, but talking over Joyce is sort of rude.

All three of the singers I write about most are in operas at the Salzburg Festival this summer.  Anna Netrebko is Mimi in La Boheme; Cecilia Bartoli is doing more performances of Giulio Cesare and Jonas Kaufmann will sing Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos.

Instead I will be going to the Santa Fe Opera.  I still don't feel up to foreign travel.  The opera selection for Santa Fe this summer is Arabella, Tosca, Maometto II, King Roger and The Pearl Fishers.

Blogging

Just a thought:  the only thing I can think of that would save Vivaldi's Griselda would be if the role of Griselda were sung by a man and played as comedy--maybe not the broad comedy of Platée, but something a bit gentler.  She should be performed as buffo, maybe even by a buffo bass.  Then we would love her and accept her, and it wouldn't matter that all her music is ugly.  Just a thought.

Blogging

The inner dialog around Griselda was intense and quite lengthy, in serious contrast to the short review.  I eschewed my usual diatribe against Peter Sellars.  He is a fascinating lecturer.  It's only his actual profession I have problems with:  stage director and production designer.  I cut him some slack because perhaps no one could probably have saved Griselda.

I learned that the complete budget for this year at the Santa Fe Opera was $11,000,000.  In the world of big time opera that is peanuts.  City Opera pays more than that just for rent.

Singers from Santa Fe

This is the tenor from La Boheme David Lomeli.


Ailyn Pérez from La Boheme.


This is Ana Maria Martinez who was our Mimi. I searched quite a while to find something with a visual AND didn't have Placido Domingo or Andrea Bocelli AND was standard operatic repertoire. This is as close as I could get.


And here is Isabel Leonard doing Handel.

These people were my favorites. It doesn't mean other people weren't very fine. The quality of singing across the board was very good this year.

Impressions of Savages

The Santa Fe Opera's production of Menotti's The Last Savage leaves behind a series of images.

The most powerful image is the troop of skinny men in their turbans, long black beards, Ghandi loin cloths and pervasive tattoos who strut around the stage with their toes pointing out.  They told us we were in a comedy.  This in turn led to speculation:  how could you possibly tattoo that many men?  Body suits?  There was no evidence of wrinkling.  Stenciling?  Maybe.  Fake tattoos?  Maybe.  Mysteries are very attractive.

Then there is the unforgettable image of the heroine Kitty in her pink safari suit, complete with pink kepi.  She is sung by the dainty and adorable coloratura soprano Anna Christy.  I didn't expect so much coloratura from Menotti.  Anna was surely perfectly cast, very much like a character from Legally Blonde.

Then there is the image of the savage himself who started out in a loin cloth and huge ugly turban.  Daniel Okulitch, a Canadian baritone who looks marvelous in all possible stages of dress and undress, is also a fine lyric baritone.  I almost said we could hope to see more of him, but how could we possibly, if you know what I mean?

We wander from India to Chicago and back.  Menotti wrote his own libretti, and his skill can best be seen in the party for Chicago society.  The savage meets a cross section of religious figures, artists, debutantes, scientists, etc.  There is even a brief bit of modern sounding chamber music, which is supposed to be the only part Stravinsky liked.

Hearing Menotti from the view of the 21st century, I realize it is in the style of the classic American musical and could easily play on Broadway--particularly in this production.

Our schedule of the five operas was in exactly the right order, especially Faust at the beginning and Savage at the end.  We wondered why Marguerite climbed into the stand of organ pipes on her way to heaven.  The answer came when the savage attempts to escape civilization by climbing into the panorama of Chicago skyscrapers at the back.  We have achieved symmetry.

This was the hit of the summer.

Griselda

From l:  Griselda, Costanza, Gualtiero, Roberto.

Every year the Santa Fe Opera does one new or neglected opera, and this year it is Vivaldi's Griselda.  Obviously, 1735 isn't new, so that leaves neglected.

The plot is not politically correct.  King Gualtiero divorces his wife Griselda and threatens to marry someone else for the sole purpose of improving his political standing.  Peter Sellars, the production designer, changed the ending.  In the original there is a kind of double wedding where mother Griselda and Daughter Costanza get together with their respective men.  Instead the King announces simply that all is forgiven, you're still queen, and Griselda just goes on sweeping the floor like it's all too much for her.  Perhaps this helps our modern sensitivities, but it does not save this cruel, anachronistic plot.

I've seen stagings of Baroque operas I liked more--I was quite fond of Rinaldo in Zurich--but I don't really know if any staging could save Griselda.  Gronk painted the set.  Everything looks like modern northern New Mexico.  Do we care one way or the other?  Not really.

Because it's really all about the singing.  And gorgeous singing it was, too.

David Daniels as Roberto is probably the biggest name, and he sang very well, but for me I can't get past the countertenor thing.  Sorry.

Tenor Paul Groves as King Gualtiero, the lowest voice on the stage, was excellent.  My previous reservations about his singing--pushed down tone--were nowhere in evidence.  His coloratura is smooth and natural for such a dark voice.

You could not do this opera without contralto Meredith Arwady as Griselda.  The role was written for Vivaldi's girl friend who, everyone keeps telling us, was a terrible singer.  I was happy to see Meredith take a dip into the Baroque but hope for something more congenial next time.  She was the emotional heart of this otherwise heartless opera.

I enjoyed Amanda Majeski as Ottone, Griselda's other suiter.  This character was translated into a highschool kid with jeans and sneakers and a gun.

The unqualified star of the evening was the incredible, spectacular, gorgeous Isabel Leonard, a mezzo in the role of Costanza.  There were rumors of a shoving match for attention between Paul and David, a seemingly pointless activity, since it was clearly Isabel who stole the show.  Hers were the best arias and she aced every single one of them, including the famous "Agitata da due venti," the hit tune for this opera.

Griselda is saved by singing.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1715-40]

Outdoor Wozzeck

To give you an idea of the open air Santa Fe Opera, in the spot where Wozzeck says "I smell something.  I smell blood." I thought to myself, "I smell something, too--skunk."  Its timeliness was suspicious.

The set and its use in the drama was spectacularly serviceable on the tiny stage.  Panels came out quickly and smoothly from the side to create the different scenes with no pause in the action.  There are scenes in Wozzeck where large crowds are on stage, people dancing, bands that play on stage, almost mob scenes, and they manage it all quite gracefully.  They have their shit rather astoundingly together here.

Wozzeck is about a soldier of the rank and file.  He shaves his commanding officer every morning.  He gathers sticks in the field.  He supports his common-law wife and their child and supplements his income by allowing himself to be the subject of medical experiments.  In his particular experiment he is allowed to eat nothing but beans.  The production implied that he might also be injected with drugs.

As a result Wozzeck talks crazy.  For instance, he imagines he is pursued by Free Masons (Freimauern).

This is my third Wozzeck--once in the 60's with Marilyn Horne, once in the 80's with Janis Martin and now with Nicola Beller Carbone, a German soprano.  I was most interested in the differences in style of these three women.  Marilyn Horne could have been singing Bellini.  Janis Martin could have been doing Wagner.  Nicola Beller Carbone was doing Berg--a rather choppy modern Berg.

Wozzeck is in the full Second Viennese School style, including extensive Sprechstimme.  Wozzeck is particularly complex with all conceivable levels between talking and singing.  Richard Paul Fink was wonderfully grim and insane, altogether an outstanding Wozzeck.

There were two big men in the production--Eric Owens as the doctor and Stuart Skelton as the drum major--looming over the tiny stage.  Owens rides a bicycle right up to the edge of the pit.  It made me wonder if the orchestra gets hazard pay.  Skelton was a marvelous asshole, but he needs to see that he doesn't become typecast.

As the years go by the music sounds less and less harsh.  Now I hear the enormous variety of colors that Berg achieves with his large orchestra.  By now music in the movies has made modern music sound familiar.  Berg feels an old friend, a fascinating, very emotional old friend.

This is by far the most I have enjoyed Wozzeck.