Happy New Year

May all your opera dreams come true.

Favorites by Year 2011 👍🏻

This year I seem to have traveled only to Santa Fe and Los Angeles.  Everything is unusual except Lucia and Walküre.  I reviewed 41 performances, including 1 CD, 6 DVDs, 18 HDs (?), and 17 live performances.

Favorite Performances

• (ND) Hamlet with Natalie Dessay   The HD Hamlet without Natalie was a disappointment which I successfully erased with this DVD.

• (ND) Natalie as Lucia HD  **  I loved Natalie Dessay in this.  When she comes out at the end you believe she has just murdered someone.  I feel grateful to the Met for letting me see this wonderful performance.    Met HD

• (JK) Die Walküre in New York **  Lovely opera with Jonas Kaufmann, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Debbie Voigt.  Not my favorite though.  There's the machine, after all, and I was in at the beginning of James Morris as Wotan.  Travel

• Capriccio HD  **  It's hard to decide whether or not one likes this opera.  People argue over which is more important, words or music.  In opera you would not want to do without either.  I've seen some pretty spectacular versions, though, all surprisingly in this production.  We had Kiri te Kanawa in SF.  Met HD

• The Last Savage at Santa Fe  **  This was the surprise hit of the summer.  Small tattooed men in turbans seems to have turned the trick.  Travel

• Griselda at Santa Fe **  This is by Vivaldi and is a terrible opera, saved only by the amazing singing of Isabel Leonard.  Travel 

• Handel's Rodelinda in HD from the Met was another excellent Baroque opera this year.  HD

• San Francisco Summer of Gertrude Stein **  This included art exhibits at the MOMA and the Jewish Museum plus Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts by Opera Parallèle.   Local

• Jaroussky in Berkeley ** Apparently for love alone Philippe Jaroussky came to Berkeley to appear with Apollo's Fire.  I'm starting to like the new Baroque music AND countertenors.  It was a wonderful concert.   Local

• Il Postino on TV  This came suddenly on my television and starred Placido Domingo.  It's an unusual opera because the two main roles are both tenors.  It is sad that the composer Daniel Catán died relatively young. TV

Singer of the Year

Singer of the year must be Natalie Dessay.  I also loved Isabel Leonard at Santa Fe. 

Didn't like

I went to LA to see Il Turco in Italia but was disappointed.  This is also the year I missed the San Francisco Opera Ring for no sensible reason.  It's returning in 2018, and I already have my ticket.

New to Me Opera

1. Catán's Il Postino, (2010) was a world premier performances on television.
2. Handel's Serse  (1738) live at SFO.  Also called Xerxes. **
3. Handel's Rodelinda (1725) live in HD from the Met starring Renée Fleming.**
4. Menotti's The Last Savage (1963) was live in Santa Fe. **
5. Purcell's The Fairy Queen  (1692) was a DVD from Glyndeourne.
6. Rossini's Le Comte Ory (1828) was HD from the Met. **
7. Theofanidis's Heart of a Soldier (2011) was a live world premier at SFO. **
8. Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) was live in San Francisco. **
9. Turnage's Anna Nicole (2011) was a DVD.
10. Vivaldi's Ercole sul Termodonte (1723) was a CD
11. Vivaldi's Griselda (1735) was live in Santa Fe. **

##20 top 20 all time

** live, live stream or live in HD

Things recommended to buy

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An operatic Merry Christmas

Blogging

Disclaimer:  I never read what the director says is supposed to be going on in the production.  I like it to unfold while I am watching and listening.  I want to allow for the possibility of surprise.  I assume that whatever I am seeing is what is intended for me to see.  If I have to read things to understand the production, something is wrong.  The purpose of the production is to explain the opera to me. I consider it the director's responsibility to communicate to me what the production means by putting the meaning in the production.

Now that it's over, I have read a lot of commentary about what was supposed to be going on in Faust.  Perhaps they were confused and I was not because they read the director's explanation.

I want to know what in the visual elements of this production would have led one to believe this was another Doctor Atomic, and that he sold his soul, not for a young woman as seems so obvious, but for the atomic bomb?  I read that that's what this production was supposed to mean.  I do not read what besides the fact that they all wore lab coats would have meant that?  I insist that if you can't see it, easily and clearly see it, it isn't there.

I don't memorize leitmotivs or tone rows either.

Pronouncing R

Norman Lebrecht has gotten himself involved in a discussion of how to pronounce "R."  (Here for French, here for German.)  This sounds like the sort of silly stuff I write about.  My fanaticism is the pronunciation of the unpronounced neutral vowel in French.  If it isn't pronounced, how are you supposed to tell how to pronounce it?

When native speakers speak both French and German, they often use a uvular or gutturalized R (back of the throat) instead of a rolled or flipped R (tip of the tongue).  When I lived in Germany, my Spanish friend  would laugh that she could do a guttural R only on the word "Brod."  Then she would demonstrate.  I couldn't do it on any word at all, so I was very impressed with this.  My uvula refuses to do anything but just hang there.  The fanatical German speech coaches fussed with a lot of things about my German but never once brought up how I pronounced R.  Perhaps they simply assume that foreigners have no hope of achieving this.  Or perhaps the uvular R isn't considered correct in opera singing.



I like to use certain models for these things. In French I think of Edith Piaf as the supreme model.  Watching this again I can see her tongue rolling those R's.  I am surprised by this.
 

For my money Régine Crespin and Edith Piaf are rolling with the tip of the tongue.  This is what singers are taught.  And you will please notice that neither one of these women use the silly super-rounded neutral vowel you are constantly hearing from coached non-French singers.



And Fritz Wunderlich is definitely using his tongue.



Christa Ludwig rolls with her tongue.  The idea here is that you do nothing with your pronunciation that interferes with your tone because tone is king.

When the man in Brussels asks for a uvular R, he is trying for a theatrical effect.  He wants Carmen to sound common.  Here is a link to comments from the singer on this situation.

Curiously, if you go back a few posts to the film of Victoria de los Angeles, the word "chagrin" sounds the most likely to be guttural of anything I've found.

The only singer I am absolutely certain consistently uses a uvular R when singing is Gisela May.



At one point in the song she even sings it with her mouth wide open.  No tongue.  She was one of Brecht's favorites.  We prefer to approach these subjects using the empirical method.

Schaefer's Dichterliebe

I have owned this film for years.  After all, it comes with Pierrot Lunaire which I reviewed here.  Es heisst Theaterrealität. It is two things in one--a film of Schumann's Dichterliebe and a film of people filming Schumann's Dichterliebe--and it can be played either way.  I am showing the long version without subtitles for the full experience.

There is an extended bit filming Christine Schaefer's bare feet.  In another section she says "Ich liebe dich" into the camera over and over.  Unsuccessfully.  We do not feel loved.  The pianist Natasha Osterkorn takes a bath.

They are German, they smoke, they drink.  "Es ist leichter sich am Arsch zu kratzen als am Hertzen," she writes on a blackboard while singing "Ich grolle nicht."  Hoffentlich.

She is performing the songs in a moving railroad car with ragged furniture and dirt.  And a grand piano.  And an audience that appears and disappears.

One hears the words as never before.

I begin to feel that the truly modern exists only in Germany.  I begin to long for Berlin Alexanderplatz.
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Inútil Paisagem

Here you go.


Try to keep up.

Scooping and Sliding

I keep thinking about this, so because today is Puccini's birthday, I have decided to post it. At least a month ago I attended a performance in the Crocker Art Museum. I won't name the singer, but her program included a group by Puccini, including "O mio babbino caro."

One programs "O mio babbino caro" to show off ones mastery of the Puccini style, specifically scooping and sliding. Angela Gheorghiu may be considered a master of this style, and performs it with at least 15 scoops and as many slides. Now try to imagine that someone would program this piece and not scoop or slide even so much as once. It was deeply shocking. I am still asking myself why.

Sliding.  A properly executed vocal slide goes from an upper note with a glissando to a lower note during the duration of the upper note, and lands on the lower note just at the right time to sing the lower note with the new word.   To emphasize the slide the lower note may be delayed by extending the glissando.  The slide ends with an anticipation of the next note.

Scooping.  A scoop approaches a note from below and begins at the time of the new note.  It's like you start flat and rise gradually to the right note.  A properly executed scoop must end in tune.

Julie Taymor's Magic Flute

Pamina:  Ying Huang
Tamino:  Matthew Polenzani
Queen of the Night:  Erika Miklósa
Sarastro:  René Pape
Papageno:  Nathan Gunn

I'm writing about the rerun of Mozart's The Magic Flute in HD from the Metropolitan Opera because I missed it the first time around.  I am out of the loop so I didn't realize it was in English.  I've seen Flute in English before and found the whole thing offensively misogynistic.  Someone was always making insulting cracks about women.  They've edited all of that nonsense out, and no one missed it.  The plot made the most sense it ever has.  Hear, hear for Mozart in the 21st century.

The biggest problem with doing Flute in English, especially for the non-native speakers, most of the cast, is that they are coached so thoroughly on pronouncing English that the musical legato suffers.  For that reason this is not the most musically satisfying Flute.  For the singer language and phrasing are intimately joined.  It isn't enough to say it right.

Mozart was an enthusiastic free mason and Julie Taymor's production uses a lot of masonic symbols, pyramids and so forth, things that mean little to the ordinary person.  Visually it is a treat.  The most effective parts of the production come with the bird elements that surround Papageno and the three boys.

Nathan Gunn as Papageno shines. He is charming, cute, athletic and a good singer. What more could you possibly want?

I enjoyed the fairy tale vision, and the conducting of James Levine.  In fact there was a lot to like.  It was over in under 2 hours.

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Image and Reality

This is Joyce DiDonato on the set of Faust, at least the part you see in the movie theater.

And this is what is actually going on.  Ah show business. Pictures are stolen from Joyce DiDonato on Facebook.