Washington Post

This is a long quote from a review of Cavalleria in the Washington Post. Dolora Zajick was the Santuza.

"Salvatore Licitra is the most maddening of today's maddening crop of almost-but-not-quite-there tenors taking the lead roles around the opera world. He's maddening because he has a glorious voice and is all over the place in the way he uses it. If a singer onstage Sunday could be criticized for pumping out sound without inflection, it was he; he almost came to grief in the opening offstage aubade, which should be anything but difficult and anything but shouted. He also sometimes is careless about details (like the correct pitch). In past years he has reportedly worked assiduously on his vocal technique, with the result that his problem areas seem to shift from one performance to another: On Sunday, the upper middle again sounded smaller than the rest of the voice.

"This is a lot of quibbling to heap on a voice as fine as Licitra's. I offer it because his duet with Zajick was about as good as it's possible for opera to get. It demonstrated that Licitra should be the unrivaled star opera tenor of our day. If he is not, it is for reasons that all appear to be fixable, and therefore all the more frustrating to a listener. "

It was the almost-but-not-quite-there bit that caught my eye. I find the situation to be more a case of sometimes all the way there and other times not. The same person isn't perfect all the time, and that's certainly the case with Licitra.

Aida Marathon

I am watching three different films of Aida at the same time, two of them from my tape collection and one a new purchase. No film of Price is currently available.

...................1.................................2........................3
Aida...........Leontyne Price..........Aprile Millo...........Nine Stemme
Radames....James McCracken.....Placido Domingo....Salvatore Licitra
Amneris......Fiorenza Cossotto......Dolora Zajick.......Lucina D'Intino
Amonasro.....Simon Estes.............Sherrill Milnes.....Juan Pons
Conductor....James Levine............James Levine........Adam Fischer

Aida starts out with "Celeste Aida," one of the toughest arias in the repertoire. What could Verdi have been thinking? I remember there was a horrendous stink about this aria in the San Francisco newspapers after Pavarotti did his first Radames there in 1982, but this film of him two years later is quite fine.

Il Trittico in HD

Conductor...............Joseph Colaneri
Production..............Jack O'Brien

For me Il Trittico is virtually a new opera. If my memory serves, I have seen only Gianni Schicchi in the opera house, though I have videos of Il Tabarro with Domingo and Gianni Schicchi with Florez. (I've written about this before here.) This is my first time for Suor Angelica.


Obviously, I have been today to see the simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera of Puccini's Il Trittico, this time in Dayton Ohio, my fourth city. We were told in the intermission that this is the Met's most complicated production. The second most complicated is the current Turandot. There was a lot of hammering in the intermissions. The opera gets gigantic sets in the naturalistic style. We are at the Met, you know.

This opera is also known as the Stephanie Blythe show. In Il Tabarro she was Frugola who brings Giorgetta small items to please her. In Suor Angelica she played La Principessa, magnificently. My feeling was that whether or not Suor Angelica is a functioning, moving, tragic opera depends completely on how this character is played. She had a fabulous aura of the dominating, unforgiving aunt, the person who never forgives. Suor Angelica sends her to hell without an apparent afterthought. She tells Angelica that her son died two years ago, the only news she cares to hear. La Principessa is utterly pitiless. Stephanie Blythe's third part is Zita, Ranuccio's mother in Gianni Schicchi.

There is great wisdom in the current Peter Gelb administration. Making opera work dramatically is the best thing that can possibly happen to it. Second is transmitting it to movie theaters so we can spare the overwhelming expense of attending opera. Now that I have become a person on a fixed income, I appreciate these things a lot more.

Il Tabarro
Giorgetta...............Maria Guleghina
Luigi...................Salvatore Licitra
Michele.................Juan Pons
Frugola.................Stephanie Blythe
Talpa...................Paul Plishka

I liked very much the casting of Il Tabarro. Maria Guleghina as Giorgetta, the straying wife, Juan Pons as Michele, her husband, and Salvatore Licitra as Luigi, her boyfriend, felt like a cast that very much blended with one another. Licitra sang well and did a great dead guy, holding his eyes open for a really long time. I worry about him. I feel he doesn't support well enough and often oversings. Yes, I know that's the same thing. Juan Pons is always marvelous.

Suor Angelica 
Angelica................Barbara Frittoli
Princess................Stephanie Blythe
Genovieffa..............Heidi Grant Murphy
Osmina..................Sara Wiedt
Dolcina.................Jennifer Check
Monitor.................Wendy White
Abbess..................Patricia Risley
Head Mistress...........Barbara Dever
Nurse...................Maria Zifchak
Lay Sister..............Lisette Oropesa

James Levine was interviewed in the intermission and commented on the popularity here of Suor Angelica, an opera with a terrible reputation. I would guess that it would work or it wouldn't. Here it worked. The music is beautiful, and Barbara Frittoli as Angelica was intense and believable. There was a very pretty deus ex machina at the end where a small boy, her son we will suppose, appears to her representing forgiveness by the Virgin. She realizes too late that by killing herself she has committed a mortal sin and will not get to see her son in heaven.

Gianni Schicchi 
Gianni Schicchi.........Alessandro Corbelli
Lauretta................Olga Mykytenko
Rinuccio................Massimo Giordano
Nella...................Jennifer Check
Ciesca..................Patricia Risley
Zita....................Stephanie Blythe

The three operas are easily called Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Alessandro Corbelli played Schicchi very athletically for a dying man. It was terse and amusing. At the end the two lovers appeared in a garden overlooking Florence, and we were treated to the view from Piazzale Michaelangelo. Wonderful.

 [See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]

Don Carlo

The Los Angeles Opera presented the later Italian version of Verdi's Don Carlo on Friday evening. The story of Don Carlo concerns the uncompromising character of King Philip II of Spain, [Facts from Wikipedia] and his devotion to the inquisition. Everyone, his wife, his epileptic son Carlo, his ally, is sacrificed to his ambition. Spain rules protestant Flanders with an iron hand.

The set consists of red modules with gothic arches which are pushed into various configurations for the many scene changes. From the balcony the arches are probably all you see. From the orchestra each module is topped with details from the religious paintings of Caravaggio copied against the red background, giving the production an aura of intense catholic passion. It is an entirely suitable invocation of religious symbolism in an opera where Philip II justifies his cruel reign over Flanders on the basis of religious prejudice. Carlo and Rodrigo champion the Flemish who appear briefly like characters from Rembrandt. [They went to the Caravaggio - Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam?]

Philip betrothed his son Carlo to Elisabeth de Valois and they fell in love. Philip then married her himself, creating this destructive love triangle.

The problem of Verdi lies in the gargantuan conceptions of his characters which must then be filled by mortal, often inadequate singers. Placido Domingo has done a marvelous job of casting this opera. Their strengths then become its strengths.

Salvatore Licitra is able to get exactly the right spinto tenor color into his voice to project the dramatic intensity of Carlo. I suppose I would advise him to practice the mesa di voce. But I rather believe he is an artist who must be loved for his gifts, which are many and perhaps even loved for his untamed spirit.

There was a truly great singer in this cast: Ferruccio Furlanetto as Philip II. His bass voice is very beautiful and his singing is as large as Verdi himself would have wanted it. It was truly an honor to hear this wonderful portrayal.

The largest female role in this opera is Eboli sung marvelously by Dolora Zajick. I honestly preferred her more lyrical singing in The Maid of Orleans last summer. Lyrical Verdi might be worth the effort. Whatever my opinion, she was wonderfully intense.

Annalisa Rospigliosi as Elisabeth is a beautiful lyric soprano with only a touch of spinto in her tone, balancing out the ensemble with an element of sweetness, the only softening element in the entire opera.

All of these voices had sufficient weight to carry over the orchestra. The ending of the opera is a kind of reverse deus ex machina--a ghost-like monk spirits Carlo off to the nether world.

Perhaps the best California opera is now in LA.

Il Trovatore

I was happily reading Divas and Scholars where he tells about the huge scandal at La Scala when Riccardo Muti insisted that the tenor, Salvatore Licitra, not take the interpolated and inauthentic high C at the end of "Di quella pira" in Verdi's Il Trovatore. Wait. Don't I have a Trovatore from House of Opera with Muti conducting and Licitra as Manrico? How interesting!

This is a pretty terrific Trovatore. Besides Muti and Licitra, the cast includes Leo Nucci as di Luna, Barbara Frittoli as Leonora and Violeta Urmana as Azucena. I bought this DVD to hear Licitra, and it's entirely possible that leaving out the high C is what allowed him to sing this role. For me this is a small sacrifice. This opera is treacherously difficult to cast. The whole opera is relentlessly intense, very heavy, and full of dramatic accentuations, but with virtually all of Bellini's coloratura left in. Caruso is supposed to have said, "All it takes to perform Il Trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world."

According to Divas and Scholars, Muti was attempting to recreate Trovatore as Verdi would have done it. If I had a score, I could follow along and see what has changed, but I did manage to notice the absence of anvils in the Anvil Chorus. Not much of anything happens on the off beats.

This is very fine Verdi indeed, something we never seemed to get in San Francisco. Scandal or no, Muti gets the most applause.

P.S. If I give such a high rating to a House of Opera DVD, it's for the musical content, not the quality of the copy. Please beware.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1850-70]

Tenors

I'm very excited about these new tenors. I haven't been really excited over a tenor since Domingo in Girl of the Golden West, and that wasn't exactly a musical excitement.

We have not had a truly wild tenor since Corelli and Mario del Monaco, and now there is Licitra. A gap has been filled. Since this Trovatore video he has lost weight and gotten rid of several pounds of hair. I rather liked his furry persona--it reminds me of my son when he was younger--though I realize it may be costume. Licitra is a spinto.

The best of the videos I bought from House of Opera is the La Boheme with Rolando Villazon. I can definitely recommend it. He has a dark lyric voice and is handsome and pleasant looking. He is very polished musically and uses his body well. He and his Mimi (Alexia Voulgaridou) are more beautiful than any of Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme people. The performance seems to be taking place outdoors on a barge somewhere in Germany. Since it is outdoors, they are wearing microphones in the Madonna configuration. Miking outdoor performances is definitely a good thing. It is well photographed and recorded, and the performance, while not quite as awesome as Bjoerling and de los Angeles, is still very nice indeed.

It is easy to imagine this handsome man with the dark voice paired with similarly dark voiced and beautiful Anna, but it would not be La Boheme--she insists on singing Musetta and not Mimi. She likes the idea of men at her feet.

And we have Florez for Rossini and Heppner for Wagner. Our cup truly runneth over.

Salvatore Licitra

My stars must have been arranged perfectly today. I decided that today was the day I would finally go to the Washington National Opera. I knew they were doing Tosca, but I didn't know who would be singing. "Tosca is hard to completely mess up," I thought. "I should like it."

Quite by accident I was treated to Salvatore Licitra singing Cavaradossi. All I can say is this is what opera is supposed to be. It's a mature voice (he's about 37), a big voice, a voice that never needs to be pushed to make its full effect. The Sony standard biography points out that he has been working with Carlo Bergonzi. This is completely believable because he has the authentic Italian style, and where is there a better master of this style than Bergonzi? Opera is for giving you goose bumps, for making the hair stand up on the back of your neck, for making you cry. Today I had the true opera experience. He's a bit rough around the edges, but I'm not at all sure this isn't part of his charm.

There is something to be said for the idea of a singer managing an opera company. The Washington National Opera might also be called the Placido Domingo personal opera. People who donate belong to the Domingo Circle, for instance. Who better than Domingo to find the best singers from around the world? I noticed the performance was sold out.

Licitra was not perfectly matched with his Tosca, Ines Salazar, who possesses a voice that can only show power above the staff. The middle of her voice is somewhat soft, and when she and Licitra were singing together he overpowered her. The conductor, Leonard Slatkin, accompanied her voice with masterful discretion, keeping the orchestra consistently under control.

It seemed to me that the performance was well in tune with Salazar's limitations, emphasizing Tosca's sweetness and religious devotion over her dramatic actress qualities. In the second act she stabs Scarpia four times, washes her hands, and spends the long instrumental interval in prayer instead of the traditional silliness with the candles.

Juan Pons as Scarpia was his usual excellent self. He died a hard, very athletic death. Licitra also managed an expert somersault in the second act. There seems to have been a lot of physical business in this opera.

By the end of the opera you should have shouted at least once, preferably several times. When toward the end they proclaim how their souls will soar in light, you should weep for the cruelty of their fate. Ultimately you should have forgotten every other Tosca you have ever seen.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]