Norma in HD

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Conductor...............Carlo Rizzi
Production..............David McVicar

Norma...................Sondra Radvanovsky
Pollione................Joseph Calleja
Adalgisa................Joyce DiDonato
Oroveso.................Matthew Rose
Clotilde................Michelle Bradley

Above is the staging for "Casta diva" from Bellini's Norma live in HD from the Metropolitan opera. The goddess to whom she prays is the moon, so the scene must appear to be moonlit.  This is the greatest complaint about this production, that the sets are too dark.  Our screen was quite large and generally easy to see, except for the very beginning, before the moon-rise, which was almost black.

My Normas have been Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballe, Cecilia Bartoli and Sondra Radvanovsky, whom I heard first in San Francisco.  For me this version was best of all for the acting. I loved Cecilia's Norma for this quality, but here it balances across the cast.

We know we are at war by the presence of bodies.  What is to be their position toward the Romans?  Norma recommends reaching a peace with them, but we know that her motives are suspicious.  She probably recommends peace because of her relationship to Pollione, the Roman proconsul.  In the first act religious ceremony Adalgisa assists Norma in the rite.

In Norma's house Adalgisa reveals that she is in love with Pollione and has promised to go with him to Rome.  Norma does not reveal to Adalgisa until later that she has two children by Pollione. The increase in the significance of Adalgisa and the increased strength of her tie to Norma changes the emotional dynamic of the opera. 

So when Norma calls her followers together again, she recommends war.   We see Norma's range of emotions, especially her rage against Pollione.  She knows someone must die, but is not sure who should be killed.  She finally arrives at herself as the person at fault.  Adalgisa appears at the end to watch her lover and her friend walk off together to their deaths.

Sondra was magnificent, a giant, intense performance still wonderfully sung.  Joyce was also magnificent in both singing and acting.  I even liked Calleja.  When watching the old timers long ago, one hardly knew there was a plot.  Here we get the best of both worlds--a traditional staging with a lot of emotional interaction and magnificent singing.
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Just saying

In case you didn't know, the average opera singer has a vibrato that causes the pitch to waver for about a half step, or the distance between c and c# if you don't know what a half step is.  It waves half of this pitch above and the other half below the intended pitch.  Listeners generally imagine the pitch to be somewhere in the middle of the wavering sound.  It is only your imagination that makes this a precise pitch.  So making comments about the singer being sharp for the whole aria may only indicate that your ear is interpreting the vibrato sharp.  Is she sharp?  Yes.  Is the exact same note also flat?  Yes.  Some singers push energy to the upper part of the vibrato or the lower part.  Pitch wavering is the same but energy is unbalanced.  Maybe your ear hears this as sharp or flat.  They aren't giving up their vibratos.

A vibrato becomes a wobble when the speed of wavering slows down.  If the vibrato becomes too wide in pitch, the mental integration can disintegrate and the note can actually sound like two notes.

Coffee

Perhaps you thought being addicted to coffee was something new.  You would be mistaken.  Apparently in Bach's day it was limited to females.  Or perhaps it's the usual men get to do whatever they want while women have to be controlled.  Sacramento Baroque Soloists presented a semi-staged version of Johann Sebastian Bach's Coffee Cantata with three soloists:  Derek Keller as the narrator, Omari Tau as papa Schlendarian and Bernadette Mondok as his daughter Lischen.  This was charming and amusing.  Coffee was provided.

Sacramento Baroque Soloists are a new group for me, though I think they have been around Sacramento for a while.

The program was filled out with a concerto by Georg Philipp Telemann and Cantata BWV 54 by Bach.  Derek Keller was the soloist in the Bach Cantata where he billed himself as a countertenor, and later in the Coffee Cantata he was a tenor.  I didn't hear falsetto from him.  For me he sounded more like a haute contra, a French style of high tenor.  He sounded fine, just not like a countertenor.

Non-Europeans in Opera

This is intended as a catalog with minimal commentary.  We are intending to survey the topic of cultural exploitation.  I have listed only those operas I have seen.

* means race is a factor in the story.

There are a small number of operas by Asian composers which include Asian characters.  They are not to be considered to be exploiting anyone.

• Tea: A Mirror of Soul by Tan Dun
• The First Emperor by Tan Dun 
• Dream of the Red Chamber by Bright Sheng

Asian characters appear in the following operas by non-Asian composers.  It is to be determined if this constitutes exploitation.

• The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Stewart Wallace is based on a novel by Amy Tan.* Including this is probably a mistake since Amy Tan is Asian and wrote the libretto.
• A Night at the Chinese Opera by Judith Weir is partly based on real Chinese opera.
• Turandot by Puccini is based on a Persian story and transferred to China perhaps for the musical effects.
• Madama Butterfly by Puccini is based on an American short story and a play by David Belasco.*
• Nixon in China by John Adams is based on historical events that many of us watched on TV. *
• The Pearl Fishers by Georges Bizet moves us to Sri Lanca.
• Attila by Verdi is about the Mongolian ruler from the 5th century who invaded Europe.
• Satyagraha by Philip Glass is about Gandhi in Africa.  The text is original Sanscrit.*

Native populations from around the world also appear in operas.  This should include the European racial minority called gypsies or Romani.  Even today Gypsies are easily identified by their facial features. 

• Les Indes Galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau includes Turks, Incas, Persians, and North Americans.*
• Carmen by Georges Bizet features Carmen, a gypsy.*
• Il Trovatore by Verdi features Azucena who is a gypsy. *
• Die Zauberflöte by Mozart includes a gratuitous black character for comedy. *
• Aida by Verdi includes Egyptians and Ethiopians, but no Europeans. *
• L'Africaine by Meyerbeer is a clash of Europeans and people from Madagascar. *
• La forza del destino by Verdi has an Aztec as the male lead.*
• Moby-Dick by Jake Heggie is based on the great American novel and includes a south sea islander, Queequeg. *  In our production he was played by a New Zealander.
• Il Postino by Daniel Catán is a Mexican writing about Chilean interacting with an Italian.  I guess that qualifies.
• La fanciulla del West by Puccini includes native Americans and a Mexican bandit.*

In American musicals and operas white Americans interact with minorities.

• Show Boat by Jerome Kern features a female black character who is passing for white. *
• Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin is almost all black.  The copyright owners require all black casting.
• West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein is about rival white and Puerto Rican gangs.*
• Champion by Terence Blanchard is about a real person, the boxer Emile Griffith.  No one is exploiting anyone.

Operas about historical figures from before Christianity.

• Nabucco by Verdi is about Jews and pre-islamic Babylonians. *
• Semiramide by Rossini
• Xerxes by Handel

Which brings us to my favorite and perhaps the only blatantly exploitative portrayal of non-Europeans--the interaction between Christian Europeans, usually Italians, and Moslems.

• Otello by either Rossini or Verdi is the moor of Venice, which makes him Moslem, not sub-Saharan African.*
• Die Entführung aus dem Serail by Mozart features a Spaniard rescuing his fiance from a harem.*
• Cosi fan Tutte by Mozart where the young men pretend to be middle eastern.
• Il Turco in Italia  by Rossini features a Muslim man visiting Italy.*
• L’Italiana in Algeri by Rossini features an Italian woman who escapes from her Muslim husband.*
• Maometto II by Rossini is a serious opera where the female character commits suicide.*
• I Lombardi by Verdi includes a Muslim character who converts.*
• Death of Klinghoffer by Adams is about a clash between western and middle-eastern cultures.  It portrays an historical event.
• Flight by Jonathan Dove includes a refugee trapped inside an airport.  For me he could have been from anywhere, but others say he was Iranian.

I am now going to express my opinion.  Either the libretto is exploitative or it isn't.  Whether or not the non-European character(s) is played by the specific ethnicity of the character would in my opinion not affect the fact that the composer and librettist chose to make possibly bogus use of a story outside their culture.

Current Favorite Thing

Turandot in San Francisco

Conductor Nicola Luisotti
Production and Design David Hockney

Turandot: Martina Serafin
Calaf: Brian Jagde
Liù: Toni Marie Palmertree
Timur: Raymond Aceto
Ping: Joo Won Kang
Pang: Julius Ahn
Pong: Joel Sorensen
A Mandarin: Brad Walker
Emperor: Altoum Robert Brubaker *

Puccini's Turandot played at the San Francisco Opera last night in the wonderful David Hockney production.  One of the reasons it's so wonderful is because it doesn't look at all Chinese.  Because the story isn't actually Chinese.  It should reasonably be regarded as a fairy tale.  I'm a sucker for the story, although I enjoyed it more before I could remember the answers to the riddles.

The chorus was particularly spectacular.  Brian Jagde seemed very intense.  With Turandot it is as much the spectacle one comes for rather than the fine details.  Let's just say it's one of the hardest operas to cast in the repertoire.

Talk at the Opera

Last night we were enjoying the 1993 production of Turandot by the great artist David Hockney when I remembered that once upon a time we were treated to the wonderful production of Die Zauberflöte by Marc Chagall, in 1980 actually, originally from the Metropolitan Opera.  No one else seemed to remember this.

Hockney also designed sets for Die Zauberflöte, The Rake's Progress and Tristan und Isolde apparently.  I'm not sure I've seen these.

Top Singers 2017

Sopranos:

Anna Netrebko GHoF

Anja Harteros 

Nina Stemme

Diana Damrau

Mezzos:

Cecilia Bartoli GHoF

Elina Garanča

Joyce DiDonato GHoF

Tenors:

Jonas Kaufmann

Javier Camarena

Juan Diego Florez

Vittorio Grigolo

Baritones/basses:

Željko Lučić, baritone

René Pape, bass

Ildar Abdrazakov, bass

Ludovic Tézier, baritone

Stefan Kocán, bass

General Comments.

It's been a couple of years since Limelight named their top 12 singers, and I feel it's time for a new list.  There have been a few changes.  I modified the original concept to allow for a group to grow into 4 singers (2 baritones, 3 basses), but that's it.  To qualify for this list the artist must be performing now and be rated according to their current performing standard.

Some singers used to be on this list and are no longer.  Dmitri Hvorostovsky has long been a personal favorite but is ill.  Renée Fleming is moving her career away from opera.  The same thing should be said for Natalie Dessay, someone I learned to love during the life of this blog.  She is focusing on song repertoire and theater.  I love Angela Gheorghiu but seem to have lost all contact with what she is singing these days.

We can't rank Placido Domingo among the tenors any more, and he doesn't really rank that high as a baritone.  For me Bryn Terfel isn't singing up to his former standard, though I caught part of his Dutchman and found it rather good.

People who should also be considered are:
Christine Goerke
Sondra Radvanovsky
Kristine Opolais
Jamie Barton
Michael Fabiano
Lawrence Brownlee
Matthew Polenzani
Bryan Hymel
Mariusz Kwiecien
Simon Keenlyside
Quinn Kelsey
Ildebrando D'Arcangelo 
  
I should do one for American singers.  Argue amongst yourselves.  Edited 9/18, 9/19  Apologies for continuing to change this.

Elektra Night at the Museum

Christine Goerke

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Conductor:  Henrik Nánási
Production:  Keith Warner

Elektra: Christine Goerke
Klytemnestra, Elektra's mother: Michaela Martens
Chrysothemis, Elektra's sister: Adrianne Pieczonka
Orest, Elektra's brother: Alfred Walker *
Aegisth, mother's lover: Robert Brubaker
Tutor of Orest: Anthony Reed

Last night I attended a San Francisco Opera performance of Richard Strauss's Elektra.  I have been going here for all of my adult life and can think of only one comparable performance--Die Frau ohne Schatten, also by Strauss, in 1980 with James King as The Emperor, Leonie Rysanek as The Empress and Birgit Nilsson as Barak's wife.  My soul is larger.  Everything that needs to be said has already been said about this, but I will have a go anyway.

In the recent past was another night at the museum production, of Il Trovatore with Anna Netrebko from Salzburg, but the exhibition seemed without a theme and incoherent.  Here we have what seems to be an exhibition of artifacts from Mycenae, the Greek culture which launched the Trojan War.  The house of Atreus with Agamemnon, Klytemnestra, Iphigenia, Orestes and Elektra are the central figures from this culture and appear through history in many art forms.  It is entirely plausible that an  exhibit devoted to physical objects from this time would take place.  Many of these objects appear in this production.  So we have a far more plausible intermingling of the ancient and the modern.  When they speak of Agamemnon, a man wearing the death mask said to belong to him appears.  We believe this.

Christine's character is always clearly a modern person who is projecting her life and family onto these historical figures.  We see this most clearly when this kitchen appears:

Klytemnestra and Elektra

We exclaimed to one another, "My mother had a kitchen like that."  The time travel was handled very smoothly.  This is clearly a very successful concept regie production.  All the other characters have dual identities and appear in modern and ancient clothing.  Other productions for this opera I have seen recently have all the main action take place off stage.  Here the deaths occur before our eyes.  It is intense.

Musically I found this to be a triumph.  The three women--Christine Goerke, Michaela Martens and Adrianne Pieczonka--were performed by three big voices in glorious fashion.  The biggest surprise was in the music.  It wasn't that long ago I was bemoaning the death of great Strauss conducting.  Henrik Nánási has shown us the way back.  It was the best Strauss I've heard in years, and it was by our San Francisco Opera orchestra.  Bravi.  Because the screens were turned on, I noticed that the orchestra stood immediately when the maestro came out for his final bow, turned toward him and applauded.

It was a colossal, towering performance on every level.

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.