Les Contes d'Hoffmann

 Hoffmann, Nicklausse

Conductor : Philippe Jordan
Director : Robert Carsen

Olympia : Nadine Koutcher
Giulietta : Kate Aldrich
Antonia : Ermonela Jaho
La muse, Nicklausse : Stéphanie d'Oustrac
La mère d'Antonia : Doris Soffel
Hoffmann : Ramón Vargas
Spalanzani : Rodolphe Briand
Nathanaël : Cyrille Lovighi
Luther, Crespel : Paul Gay
Andrès, Cochenille, Pitichinaccio, Frantz : Yann Beuron
Lindorf, Coppélius, Dapertutto, Miracle : Roberto Tagliavini

Les Contes d'Hoffmann from Paris, 2016. I'm watching this because I'm a huge fan of Stéphanie d'Oustrac. She's doing the male-Nicklausse/female-Muse thing with great expertise.

Our Olympia treats us to a bit of pseudo-nudity before being shockingly disassembled.  She is fun.

There are no titles.  This is what going to the opera used to be like.  Perhaps this is why opera has shifted its values toward the theatrical.  They used to just stand around singing.  Nobody really knew more than just vaguely what was going on.  Now everyone acts.

In the Antonia act we are in a theater orchestra pit, where she steals the conductor's score.  Her aria is my favorite part of the opera.  Her mother appears on the stage above, Antonia runs about trying to get up on the stage, and finally she succeeds.  This segment of the story is confusing.  In opera everyone sings all the time.  So Antonia is told if she sings she will die.  She sings.  She dies.  But how do we tell which singing is the singing that kills her?   The orchestra appears in the pit and the act ends.

Now we are in the audience of the same theater?  Nicklausse and Giulietta sing the barcarole from the seats.  The audience files in and begins making out with one other.  This is Paris where there seems always to be hanky-panky on the stage.  Being in the chorus there is a whole different thing.  We're supposed to be in Venice.

When all Hoffmann's loves are gone, the muse returns.  I loved only the one I came to see.  For the bows she changes quickly back into her Nicklausse outfit.  Enjoyable if not very romantic.

Eugene Onegin Rerun

👍🏻
Conductor...............Valery Gergiev
Production..............Robert Carsen

Eugene Onegin..Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Tatiana...............Renée Fleming
Lensky................Ramón Vargas
Olga....................Elena Zaremba
Prince Gremin....Sergei Aleksashkin

Yesterday I attended the rerun of  Eugene Onegin from the Metropolitan Opera.  This opera has been broadcast live into theaters from the Met on three different occasions with three different men in the title role:  Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Mariusz Kwiecien and Peter Mattei.  Because he recently died, the version with Dmitri Hvorostovsky was chosen for re broadcast.  Apparently some theaters decided to show whatever version they had on hand instead of the advertised version.  I'm glad that didn't happen to me because I was there for Dima.  When he steps out onto the stage, he is so beautiful you might want to consider falling in love, too.  This may be his greatest recorded performance.

The production by Robert Carsen is also very easy to love.  Locales are merely suggested rather than depicted.

And another thing to consider is that it is conducted by the great Russian conductor Valery Gergiev.  It was a joy.   If they played something else in your town, complain to Fathom Events.

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Thank You

👍🏻
This is the moment in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera, at the end of Act I when Renée Fleming looks out into the auditorium and thinks this is perhaps the last time.  The look of this scene resembles Blenheim Palace, the home of the Duke of Marlborough. 

Conductor....................Sebastian Weigle
Production...................Robert Carsen

Count Octavian Rofrano.....Elīna Garanča
Princess von Werdenberg...Renée Fleming
Baron Ochs...................Günther Groissböck
Sophie.......................Erin Morley
Faninal......................Markus Brück
Annina.......................Helene Schneiderman
Valzacchi...................Alan Oke
Italian Singer.............Matthew Polenzani

The time has been moved to 1912 when the opera was first performed, just before WWI.  All the men are soldiers.  There were many special moments in this Rosenkavalier, but I especially liked when the Marschallin sings "Wenn ich auch an ein Maedel errinnern, die frisch aus dem Kloster bis in die heiligen..." and she goes over to the chest containing the rose, takes it out and remembers that once the rose arrived for her.  I have never seen this business before.  I saw my first Renée Fleming Marschallin in 2000 in San Francisco and find her characterization was deeper and more serious than before.  I also loved that at the end she takes the arm of the police sergeant, moving on to her next lover it would seem.  I can only describe her as magnificent.

Most of the details of the staging are acceptable if not always traditional, but at the end is a surprise.  In Act I a large, odd looking green hat appears.  Then at the very end of the opera when everyone has left the stage, an army rises up with someone in the center wearing the green hat.  We must assume this is the otherwise not seen Feldmarschall being mowed down in battle.  Curious.  This could easily be done without.

I didn't agree with every detail, but the richness of texture of this production filled my heart to overflowing.  Der Rosenkavalier holds a special place in my heart, and this one has risen to the top. 

Our Ochs, Günther Groissböck, was Ochs in Salzburg in 2014.  He adds many layers of depth to this character.

And our Italian singer was none other than Enrico Caruso.

This moment in the second act was also perfection, though of the more traditional sort.  Octavian leans over to smell the Persian attar of roses, looks up at Sophie and instantly falls in love.  I first heard Erin Morley in King Roger in Santa Fe where she was wonderful.  Her Sophie is much more than a mere soubrette and adds soaring lines.  Her acting is also more complex than usual.

When I saw her in duets with Anna Netrebko, I did not imagine that our Latvian mezzo Elīna Garanča would turn out to be such a wonderful actress.  She was simply spectacular.  I'm having a hard time finding the words for something that exceeded my wildest imaginings.  She threw herself so gleefully into Mariandel.

We finished with a spectacularly glorious trio.  Thank you, Peter Gelb, Metropolitan Opera, Günther Groissböck, Erin Morley, Renée Fleming, and most of all Elīna Garanča for a wonderful memory.

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Ariadne auf Naxos from Munich

Conductor:  Kirill Petrenko
Production:  Robert Carsen

Haushofmeister:  Johannes Klama (spoken)
Ein Musiklehrer:  Markus Eiche (baritone)
Der Komponist:  Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)
Bacchus/Der Tenor:  Peter Seiffert (tenor)
Ein Offizier:  Petr Nekoranec (tenor)
Ein Tanzmeister:  Kevin Conners (tenor)
Ein Perückenmacher:  John Carpenter (baritone)
Ein Lakai:  Christian Rieger (bass)
Zerbinetta:  Brenda Rae (coloratura soprano)
Ariadne/Primadonna:  Amber Wagner (soprano)
Harlekin:  Elliot Madore (baritone)

I don't think of Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss as a dark opera, so I was not exactly comfortable with all the black, especially in the second part.  On the live stream it was hard to see.  I think you could fake this with the technology and make it a bit lighter.

We begin in a mirror lined room, like a ballet studio only without the horizontal bars.  People are dancing.  The two entertainments must be performed as one because (as we know from the original Ariadne) the wife has requested fireworks when it gets dark at 9:00.  There is much dressing and undressing, which was wonderfully amusing, by both ballet men and singer men.  Very dark set with almost nudity.  For me this is incongruous.  They almost have to take off their clothes before we can see them at all.

I'm not sure why we love this opera.  Because it's successfully silly?  Or is it because it includes two of the greatest arias in the German repertoire:  "Es gibt ein Reich" and "Großmächtige Prinzessin".  This was an excellent cast from all over the opera world.  For me the highlight of the performance was Amber Wagner's "Es gibt ein Reich."  Glorious.  I can't think of when I've heard it better.  Brenda Rae approached "Großmächtige Prinzessin" more from a sexy/romantic direction than the usual showing off.  She was previously seen in Die Schweigsame Frau.  Both of these women are American.

Musically it was the very best.  Zerbinetta flirted with Petrenko.  Wenn es irgendwas heiliges gibt, muss es die Musik sein.

Born to Play Falstaff

Ambrogio Maestri

👍🏻

Conductor: James Levine

Production: Robert Carsen 

Nannetta: Lisette Oropesa
Alice: Angela Meade
Mrs. Quickly: Stephanie Blythe
Meg Page: Jennifer Johnson Cano
Fenton: Paolo Fanale
Falstaff: Ambrogio Maestri
Ford: Franco Vassallo

He is a giant man who does not require any padding to fully represent the magnificent Sir John Falstaff.  His voice precisely fits the role.  He can remain cheerful in the most horrendous of circumstances.  He is Italian and has the native Italian's regard for Verdi.   Ambrogio Maestri must surely have been born to play Falstaff.  It was simply a joy to watch and hear him. He also brought risotto which you can find the recipe for on the Met website.  

However, we couldn't help reinterpreting the entire story from a much more Italian perspective.  We weren't alive in England in Shakespeare's time, but we were more able to imagine the English wanting to take revenge on mere flirting than we were able to imagine Italians from the 1950s wanting it.  Isn't this how an Italian man is expected to behave?  Would Italian women be surprised or shocked by it?  We think "yes" and "no" are the appropriate answers to these questions.

The Robert Carsen production for this Metropolitan Opera live in HD presentation moved the drama to the 1950s, we imagine because he could not resist the 50s clothing and kitchen styles.  Falstaff visits Alice in her kitchen to allow for far more than linens to throw around the stage.  (I bought this much more than I bought Ochs visiting Faninal in his kitchen here.)  Sir John is a gentleman, and it is thought that gentlemen last enjoyed their full privileges while the British Empire was still in tact.  

I especially liked the opening scene.  Sir John is reading the morning paper while still in bed and still in his night clothes.  It is a large, significant bed, and round it are several small tables still covered with debris from last night's drunken party.  With this setting we require no help making our way through the dialogue of the opening scene.  All is clear as day.  They read the list of expenses, and we see immediately that these are for the party.

The only complaint is trivial--there was no oak tree in the final scene.

Stephanie Blythe sang "Reverenza" exactly as Marilyn Horne would have done, and then tells us that her first performance of the opera was as Marilyn Horne's understudy.  Era perfetto.

Of my three Falstaffs this year, this was definitely the best.  Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. 

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Mefistofele or Fausts I have Known

Of the three operas based on Goethe's Faust only Boito's Mefistofele goes on to include material from Part II, ending with Faust's salvation.  Faust's bargain is that if he sees something he finds beautiful, he will ask to stay in that moment and lose his soul.  But it is only when he reaches heaven that Faust says, "This is beautiful.  I would like to stay."   He wins the bet.

This opera was a failure and really only came to prominence when it became a vehicle for Samuel Ramey.  In fact I've seen this production twice before, in 1989 and 1994, both times with Ramey.  I wasn't sure until they came to the scene where Faust seduces Margherita, staged here with a large raised circle in the center of the stage.  A woman sits next to the circle peeling apples, and then suddenly gets up and starts turning a crank that makes the circle rotate.  Memorable.

This time we have:

Conductor:  Nicola Luisotti
Production:  Robert Carsen

Mefistofele:  Ildar Abdrazakov
Faust:  Ramon Vargas
Margherita:  Patricia Racette
Marta:  Erin Johnson
Elena:  Patricia Racette

It's a very silly opera but highly entertaining.  My friends all loved it.   Ildar Abdrazakov is cute but not the towering figure Sam Ramey was in the role.

There was an honest to god Walpurgis Nacht such as I have never seen before.  I should have brought my birdwatching binoculars because mere opera glasses were not sufficient to tell if those actually were naked men on the stage.  (Avoid all sentences using the word dong.)  I thought perhaps it was an homage to the recently deceased Lotfi Mansouri who was famous for bringing lots of nudity to SFO.  I hope so.  At intermission we immediately began talking furiously about Mansouri's The Fiery Angel with almost nude acrobats and fully nude strippers.  I talked about bringing my binoculars for the rest of that season to search the back rows of the chorus for nude women.  And yes, I found some.  What a great season.

I can't think of anything sensible to say about this.  Patricia Racette was great, and is spending all of her spare time rehearsing Dolores Claiborne for the opening next week.  The chorus work was outstanding.

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The Sexy Poppea we have been looking for

A lot has changed at Glyndebourne since the video for Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea was filmed in 1984 with Maria Ewing in the starring role. I was disappointed with the earlier version, but this film from the same venue in 2008 with Danielle de Niese completely makes up for it. Where to begin?

This opera comes at the beginning of commercial opera in Venice. If we have no royalty footing the bill, we must turn to operas which might interest the masses: namely operas about sex and violence, the same things that interest us.

The sexual ambiguity of the casting is probably also authentic to the original.

The incredible Alice Coote is Nerone, putting the role back into the treble where it belongs. Women definitely appeared on stage in Venice, and one of them sang Poppea.

Everything is up to date with 2008, including the staging. The prologue takes place in the audience. The first scene is a bed. Then we have a few books scattered around the floor for Seneca’s house; then a bathtub, first for Nero to kill Lucano in, then for Ottavia; then a scene at the beach created with a large drape and a picnic basket; lots of black men’s suits; in short, modern minimalism.

Of course the star of the show is actually Emmanuelle Haïm and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In the extras it is explained that the two extant scores for this work consist of the voice parts and a figured bass. For any modern performance what the orchestra plays is completely invented in the modern era. The orchestration for this performance conforms to current standards for original instrument orchestras. For my ears the recorders and tambourines sound almost medieval. Are we overdoing a bit?

The playing is passionate and expressive. We are still in the period of opera where most of the music is Florentine Camerata recitative. There are outbursts of incredible coloratura and instrumental interludes for variety, but the endless recitative can get occasionally a bit tedious. Try to imagine you’re Italian.

I am writing too much, but it can’t be helped. All of Monteverdi is pre-tonal, but he clearly has a personal style for how the chords progress from one to the other that is quite beautiful. He is a very great master.

Yes, there’s plenty of sex, actually surprisingly a lot. Also violence. If sex and/or violence can be going on while this dialog is being sung, it pretty much is. Both men and women are in drag. There is talk about virtue and a character who dies for it. That alone has to be unique. On top of all of that we have the gorgeous Danielle de Niese.  Danielle and Alice's voices are well paired.

The contrast with the previous DVD could not be greater. This one is a lot more fun.  I am clapping to the computer screen.
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Gluck Explained

Gluck has always puzzled me. In music history books he gets a whole chapter named after himself and is treated as some kind of big deal. He reformed opera. The only problem is that these operas are never done. If he rates a whole chapter, I thought, how come I never hear him? I learned "Che faro senza Euridice" and "O del mio dolce ardor" like everyone else, but that was the limit of my contact with him.

Christoph Willibald (von) Gluck was born in 1714 and grew up during the period of the collapse of counterpoint. By 1740 this collapse was complete. It was the complete disappearance of counterpoint that led Bach to write The Art of the Fugue. So you shouldn't be concerned that Handel said that Gluck knew as much counterpoint as his cook. Or that Metastasio called Gluck's music "barbaric." He was the younger generation.

Cecilia Bartoli recorded an album of Gluck arias, but they were entirely in the Italian style, not the later reform operas. Until the appearance of this album I was not aware that Gluck had composed so much opera seria, including libretti by Metastasio. These operas are performed even less often than the reform operas.

In 1752 Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote his opera Le Devin du Village and had it performed for the king of France. He was not concerned about the fact that that he was not a composer, nor should he have been. The point of Rousseau writing an opera was to change people's attitude about opera. It's opera for ordinary people. The enormous popular success of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona in Paris occurred that same year. These are comic operas devoid of pomp and serious music. They are for fun.

I put this in an article about Gluck because these were enormously influential in their time, and their influence extended to Gluck who sponsored opéra comique in Vienna. Gluck was right in the middle of a period devoted to the dumbing down of music. They liked folk songs and extreme simplicity. The re-intellectualizing of music was done in the structural advances of Haydn and Mozart. Not Gluck.

I am trying to explain to myself the experience of seeing Iphigénie en Tauride last night at the San Francisco Opera. It simply isn't like anything I've ever heard. The opera was first performed in Paris in 1779 and is considered the ultimate expression of Gluck's reforms. He was aiming for this.

There's no ballet. The San Francisco Opera's production included a lot of ballet work, but none of it is in pieces intended to be ballet. There's no coloratura at all. Not even tiny hints of it. The men's parts are written for men's normal voices. There's no secco recitative, and you have to be really paying attention to catch the transitions from recitative to aria. Clue: the harpsichord goes in and out, in for the recitative, out for the arias and other concerted pieces. There are arias, but they could have been folk songs. If it weren't for occasional high notes, how would we know it was an opera? The orchestration is not fully classical. Nor is it Baroque. He just fools around with sonorities in a completely homophonic texture. I like more to hook my ears to than this.

The plot is unrelentingly grim. Iphegenie is required to kill two men simply because they are strangers. They turn out to be from Mycenae, her home, and she finds out from them what has happened to her parents. They talk endlessly about killing and death, but only King Troas actually dies. Eventually she finds out that one of the two men is her brother Orestes. There is a very nice deus ex machina at the end that ends the curse of Agamemnon's family.

I think the significance of Gluck derives from hind sight. German historians like anyone who has a theory to go with whatever music they are writing. We might have liked Wagner without knowing he had a theory, but would anyone care about Schoenberg if he didn't have a theory? Would anyone listen to these reform operas if we didn't think Gluck was a forerunner of through-composed style operas of the nineteenth century? The existence of the theory seems to validate the significance of the work. Actually enjoying listening to it doesn't seem to be important.

If he was so influential, who did he influence? Where is the vogue he started? Mozart is supposed to be influenced by Gluck, but I don't hear it. Mozart wrote real arias and never abandoned secco recitative. He composed Metastasio just like everyone else. Idomeneo is structurally looser than opera seria generally is. Is this the influence they are talking about? Gluck's reform operas weren't popular enough in Vienna for Mozart to want to imitate them.


I didn't mind the minimalist production--everything was black except for a few words written on the walls. EPHEGENIE. AGAMEMNON. CLYTEMNESTRA. This successfully clarified the plot for me. A bit more differentiation between characters might have helped. It was hard to tell Bo Skovhus as Orestes from Paul Groves as Pylades. Their voices were remarkably similar and occupied a remarkably similar pitch range. Susan Graham was very good. Her voice is lyrical and sweet. A heavier sound in this role would have produced a different opera. Heidi Melton stood in the auditorium while singing Diane, the deus ex machina, thus saving the expense of any actual machinery. She has a huge blasting voice in startling contrast to the mortals in the opera.

It was a lot less boring than it should have been.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1760-1780]

Eugene Onegin in Portland

Eugene Onegin....Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Tatiana.................Renée Fleming
Lensky..................Ramón Vargas
Olga....................Elena Zaremba
Prince Gremin......Sergei Aleksashkin

Conductor...............Valery Gergiev
Production..............Robert Carsen

This is what opera is about. Those of us who go to opera whenever we can are waiting to see this: Eugene Onegin from the Metropolitan Opera with Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Onegin and Renée Fleming as Titania.

The reason everyone thinks Renée Fleming isn't doing any of her interpretive quirks in this opera is because this is the style her quirks are designed for. This is Renée Fleming at her very best. She also brought out the best in Dmitri, getting him fully engaged in the action. The opera was involving and heartrending.

Juan Vargas as Lensky and all the other singers were also very fine. And need I mention that Valery Gergiev was wonderful? It was the best that opera has to offer.

The production was a kind of compromise minimalism that worked for me. There were no real sets. In the scenes in the first act, through the scene where Onegin rejects Titania with an absurd arrogance, the set consists of some suggestions of trees, a trap door in the stage and piles of leaves. In the second half chairs suggested scenes.

This style of production focuses the attention on the actors. When they deliver, it works, and this time it was perfection. The costumes were period and very beautiful. Dmitri in particular looked gorgeous. He is such a beautiful man.
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Manon Lescaut

At last a concept production at the Wiener Staatsoper! I thought I wasn't going to get one. Apparently in Puccini's Manon Lescaut the road to perdition is paved with couture! High fashion will lead you to destruction.

The opening scene where Manon, De Grieux and Germonte all meet takes place in the street in front of a fashion house department store with large windows filled with mannequins dressed to the nines. Thin women in business suits walk by and ogle the outfits in the windows. Manon and De Grieux escape in a Mercedes sedan.

In the second act Manon is seduced by expensive outfits. She longs for both love (good) and fashion (evil). This scene takes place in Germonte's house, and the windows show a view of what might be Central Park.

The concept is best in the third act. Women's names are called to list the women who will be deported to America, thus beginning a parade of high fashion models in designer dresses with their hands handcuffed together in front. Each model does her catwalk strut across the stage, showing off her unique outfit, ending with the traditional wedding dress done in red. How many fetishes does this cover? High fashion leads to crime, prison and handcuffs.

Act IV takes place in the deserted set of Act I with the same windows full of couture. Manon is dying from lack of water, water clearly not provided by high fashion dresses. She dies declaring her love.

Production designer says to self, "I get to do opera productions, but darn, I never get to design my own fashion line. Manon Lescaut is my opportunity." My advice is don't give up your day job. The couture idea works well enough and is just short of completely irrelevant.

Manon Lescaut is Puccini's first big hit, his most lushly romantic opera with some of his most beautiful music, played beautifully by the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper under the direction of Miguel Gomez-Martinez.

Someday, perhaps soon, Anna will sing this and she will be able to do the supermodel strut, which our excellent soprano, Daniela Dessi, was not. She will also look delicious in the photography scenes. The opera seems to play out in front of the production without paying much attention to it.

In this production Manon sings the madrigal herself when the group of four backup singers appears. Sweet.

Advice for all of them: your voices are right for these roles, but you need to relax into the phrases. Let it flow more easily. The audiences in Vienna are very sophisticated and praise only the very best.

Dirigent Miguel Gomez-Martinez
Inszenierung und Licht Robert Carsen

Manon Lescaut Daniela Dessì
Lescaut Adrian Eröd
Chevalier Renato Des Grieux Fabio Armiliato
Geronte de Ravoir Janusz Monarcha
Edmondo Cosmin Ifrim
Wirt Marcus Pelz

Zurich Semele

Semele just may be my favorite Handel opera. By then he had been in England so long the English had begun to rub off on him, and this influence flowered into "Oh sleep" and "Where e'er you walk", two dreamily gorgeous songs in the English style. After writing so many oratorios, he had begun to feel that a chorus here and there would break up the monotony of aria and recitative.

And the plot is so wonderfully juicy. Jove whisks his darling off to a newly built castle in the mountains and showers her with presents, leaving his wife at home to fume.

Zurich Opera got it right. It is exactly like a story from the tabloids--like Brad running off with Angelina. It worked in New York as a semi-serious scandal, and it works here as something like a slapstick comedy. Iris, Juno's servant, played to perfection by Isabel Rey, is the comic sidekick, kicked around the stage by her mistress and constantly getting into trouble.

I begin to wonder if it mightn't be Handel's only opera buffa--especially when Semele herself is also played as buffa by Cecilia Bartoli. She continues to present the most spectacular detailing in the coloratura that we've ever heard. I know I said Anna Netrebko was the most athletic singer I've ever seen, but that was before I saw Cecilia in mid cadenza in "Should I persist in gazing" bouncing up and down on the bed. It was a Cecilia Bartoli moment. The entire aria was a complete tour de force I hope I never forget. Each phrase was a masterpiece, a miracle of phrasing and not merely one of comic genius.

The giant Birgit Memmert in the role of Juno loomed over her Iris and was at once dramatic and funny. They didn't combine the roles of Ino and Juno in one singer as they did in New York, but then they didn't have Vivika Genaux either. Liliana Nikiteanu was a lyrical Ino, and Charles Workman's Jupiter was also fine.

One nice comic bit worth mentioning was the staging of the search for Somnus whom Juno wants to put Jupiter's guard dogs to sleep. He is lost in a crowd of sleeping men, and Juno and Iris search in the dark with flashlights. Iris happily serves as his reward.

Both productions, New York and Zurich, ended in the same way: Jove and not Apollo appears with Juno at the end. Jove finds a new girlfriend to replace Semele. It has to have this ending.

The current trend in ornamenting the da capos was everywhere in evidence here. Cecilia's ornaments were particularly wild. Of course. What fun!  It's possible it will come out later on DVD.

Cecilia Bartoli appeared at the beginning in a wedding dress.

She is to be married to a man selected by her father. The omens for the marriage from Juno are good, but Semele pleads to Jove to rescue her from this marriage she does not want. Her sister also does not want it. This scene is dramatically but not musically interesting.

Jove steps in and sweeps Semele off to a villa he has created for her. Cecilia then came out wrapped in a sheet to sing "Endless pleasure, endless love." This is one of the hit tunes of Semele, and was sung with great enthusiasm.

Semele becomes discontent almost immediately. Jove leaves her alone at night and she sings the beautiful song (beautifully) "O sleep." To placate her Jove gives her stuff.

Outfits.

One outfit she chooses to wear is currently being worn by someone else.

The opera is very sensual, and Cecilia projected a lot of sensuality in her voice, her manner, her body, her style. Time is spent keeping Semele happy.  Chorus crowd the stage.

Jove sings a love song to Semele "Where e'er you walk", one of the great pieces by Handel and one of the greatest love songs ever written.

Finally Semele is seduced from her true path by the image of her own beauty. "Should I persist in gazing," a very funny song done in the style of a great virtuoso, both in the field of comic business and Handelian coloratura.

Semele goes on to throw a tantrum immediately afterward. The role offers great scope for La Bartoli, offering her sweet songs, comic coloratura and an intense rage aria.

The opera ends badly for Semele who is burned up by Jupiter's flame after briefly seeing the error of her ways.
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Rusalka

This should come as no surprise, but productions from Paris seem to focus on sex. That's fine for Alcina with Renée Fleming, Susan Graham and Natalie Dessay, since that's what Alcina is about--sex, not love. Men enchanted in various stages of undress seems quite sensible as well as entertaining. Incidentally, the cast of the House of Opera nude man Alcina is the same as the CD recommended in the New York Times Essential Library--Opera book. The singing on the video is excellent.

This DVD of Dvorak's Rusalka is also from Paris, and recasts the fairy tale into sexual terms. Instead of nude men, we have beds in every scene. As a water sprite Rusalka, it seems, doesn't long for the Prince so much as his bedroom, seen perched at the top of the set.

When the rival appears, the Prince alternates between two identical bedrooms. The story isn't very attractive when told this way. It effectively showcases Renée Fleming in her favorite role.
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