tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-179999072024-03-07T21:20:37.725-05:00My Favorite IntermissionsMaury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.comBlogger491125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-64374812151296793812010-03-25T16:56:00.003-05:002010-03-25T17:04:24.416-05:00Paved with stars?Here is the obit I wrote for this blog just before Ariadne, though having taken a few months off, I'm wondering if my hesitation in posting it is a sign I shouldn't let it go quite yet. Anyway I love a valedictory, so put on Haydn's Farewell or Wotan's Farewell or any other you've got by the Brunswick, and if I end up posting tomorrow, you can't say you didn't have time to figure out that I'm flighty and inconsistent.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Five years is a long time to do anything.<br /><br />Well it's not quite five years. Four and a half. But sometimes life hands you bookends. It appears the first thing I wrote up on here--no, wait, the first thing I <i>blogged</i> is what I typed first, and I don't see any reason to disavow the medium with all its idiocies and minor glories--was Ariadne. It was October, 2005 in the same beloved production with Urmana, Villars, and Damrau. "By the end of the best evenings at the opera, of course," this all began, "you feel as if you'd run a marathon."<br /><br />The last thing I'm going to blog is also going to be Ariadne. [This did not turn out to be true exactly, though La Cieca posted a Wellsungian chat about it between me and the Squirrel.]<br /><br />I'm not giving it up altogether. I've gotten too attached to it. But I've come to despair a little of writing another review of a production I already told you about a year ago and trying to make some little joke because it otherwise feels stale. And maybe more importantly, I think I need to be doing something else with my writing, but that's less for you to worry about.<br /><br />So as far as My Favorite Intermissions is concerned, the gongs done gung as I am wont to say during actual intermissions. I'm hoping to write things elsewhere, if asked. But as far as this is concerned, in the form in which you have indulged it, I think the time has come.<br /><br />Insofar as I leave you, it is with a few words from Onegin, always dear to me.<br /><br />While all those cupids, devils, serpents, <br />Upon the stage still romp and roar,<br />And while the weary band of servants<br />Still sleeps on furs at carriage door;<br />And while the people still are tapping,<br />Still sniffling, coughing, hissing, clapping;<br />And while the lamps both in and out<br />Still glitter grandly all about;<br />And while the horses, bored at tether,<br />Still fidget, freezing, in the snow,<br />And coachmen by the fire's glow<br />Curse masters and beat palms togeher;<br />[D'Annato] now has left the scene<br />And driven home to change and preen.<br /><br />This intermission is ending. Enjoy the opera.<br /><br />With gratitude for your attention,<br />MD'<br /><br />Next up: either a spring roundup or nothin'.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-5700794161726296072010-02-02T10:54:00.004-05:002010-02-02T10:58:35.134-05:00In which I am an idiotUm, yes. I wrote that entire review and did not say the name of the opera company. I have to have like ten hours of sleep or I'm not functional. It's very sad really.<br /><br />dell'Arte Opera Ensemble. And, as an anonymous commenter helpfully adds, photos are available at the company's <a href="www.dellarteopera.org">site</a>. [www.dellarteopera.org, if that link isn't working, which for some reason it seems not to be.]Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-8247829577714446322010-01-31T23:32:00.005-05:002010-02-01T19:12:58.345-05:00On with the show/Off with her headYou know, If you'd told me I'd get my first opportunity to see Anna Bolena in a little theater with maybe twelve rows of seats in the East Village I'd have told you to pull the other one, but that's how it went down. I've listened to Bolena on recording for half an age and have been dying to see it. I s'pose you could call me Bo-curious. But you don't have to.<br /><br />These tiny productions, like this and the Poppea at Poisson Rouge (which shared cast member Cherry Duke, interesting onstage in both) are not about note perfection, but often provide a kind of musico-theatrical satisfaction unavailable in a huge house. See it's actually more stirring when someone leaves the stage to be beheaded ten feet from you than when the same thing happens a hundred yards away. This is true. And I guess it's only in New York that a tiny company would put on Bolena instead of Barber of Seville, right?<br /><br />So listen. I don't find myself inclined to review small company stuff the same way as stuff on a grillion dollar budget. Going detail by detail you might find things that are less than polished, and it isn't the point. There were weaker and stronger voices here, though I can't help but throw some verbiage in the direction of Jill Dewsnup, the bright voiced lyric whose star shone brightly enough for a larger house. (This isn't about volume--who can tell in a theater the size of a Dallas garage? She's just very good, and made much of the wonderful final scene.) <br /><br />But meanwhile, the experience as a whole was utterly enjoyable. Particularly in ensembles, individual weaknesses seemed to cancel out, individual strengths to build on one another, and music usually heard from a balcony box to envelope one in the taut crescendi Donizetti, in his best work, manages to make stirring beyond the music's straightfoward materials. <br /><br />I think this was opera put on with great affection, as if you and a bunch of your friends all decided to fix up the barn and put on a Tudor Queen or two, only somehow you magically became really good musicians, which presumably you mostly aren't. The artistic director notes (appropriately, in the Artistic Director's Note): "...we've tried not to worry too much about the historians and the purists. Instead we're just trying to create good sung-story-telling, being as true as possible to the style and tradition, and creating something that audeinces can appreciate." They have succeeded in this. <br /><br />Oh, you know, I'm also going to throw a little extra praise to Matthew Anchel, our Enrico, who if my program math is right, has the vocal means of someone further along in his career. <br /><br />For the hell of it, I will mention that I found myself wondering a little, as long as they were going with a spare approach scenically, if it might not have made sense to do that street clothes thing* that they do at BAM sometimes, see how it frees people up physically, though the costumes were made with evident care. The "Director's Note", to my amusement, contains a dig at the big R, the aesthetic we have all come to call Regie, so maybe I'm just being contrary.<br /><br />Later in the year, it looks like they're putting on <i>Konigskinder</i> and, really, how often do you get a chance to see that? Put it on the calendar!<br /><br />*ok I'm sure nobody wears what they'd wear to run to the bodega for cat litter and Little DebbiesMaury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-54549903276079250262010-01-29T16:15:00.002-05:002010-01-29T16:19:53.553-05:00FOUR WORDSLOS ANGELES<br />ZAJICK<br />ORTRUD<br /><br />but since I never stop at four words: this makes me sad to live so far away, as someone who has often found Zajick a mix of staggering and a little bit mundane but who has on occasion thought "oh but I bet in Wagner...."<br /><br />Anyway it's happening in December. In my fantasy world, it's an out-of-town tryout for an appearance in the Wilson Lohengrin (a piece you will admit is in some way we are too polite to specificy well-suited to Ms. Zajick's dramatic instincts) to star Jonas Kaufmann and Dorothea Roschmann. COME ON UNIVERSE MAKE IT HAPPEN.<br /><br />Actual entry soon. I think.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-69957770052970686062010-01-27T17:40:00.001-05:002010-01-27T17:42:16.609-05:00!!!Friday, April 15, 2011 at 8 PM<br />CHICAGO SYMPHONY<br />ORCHESTRA<br />Riccardo Muti, Music Director and Conductor<br />Aleksandrs Antonenko, Tenor (Otello)<br />Krassimira Stoyanova, Soprano (Desdemona)<br />Nicola Alaimo, Baritone (Iago)<br />Barbara Di Castri, Mezzo-Soprano (Emilia)<br />Juan Francisco Gatell, Tenor (Cassio)<br />Antonello Ceron, Tenor (Roderigo)<br />Paolo Battaglia, Bass (Montano)<br />Eric Owens, Bass-Baritone (Lodovico)<br />Chicago Symphony Chorus<br />Duain Wolfe, Director<br />VERDI Otello (concert performance)<br /><br />Don't know from Alaimo but Antonenko and Stoyanova:<br /><br />!!!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.carnegiehall.org/SiteCode/Intro.aspx">More on the Carnegie season.</a>Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-81395362875595188722010-01-20T12:21:00.002-05:002010-01-20T12:33:46.011-05:00Go West!Genuinely appealing seasons coming up in <a href="http://www.coc.ca/PerformancesAndTickets/1011Season.aspx">Toronto</a> and <a href="http://sfopera.com/operahome.asp">San Francisco</a>.<br /><br />SF gets Mattila as Emilia Marty before the Met does, Hot Luca in Figaro, and a Ring cast that goes from strength to strength, Larisa Diadkova and Mark Delavan being two of those strengths. COC has a Carsen Orfeo, Jill Grove and the Radvan in Aida, and the splendid Ms. Bayrakdarian in a couple of roles. This is the time of year when Maury traditionally feels confirmed in his "travel is overrated" shtick. Not this year!Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-24160587022143121782010-01-12T13:14:00.002-05:002010-01-12T13:21:27.037-05:00Plácido Domingo Announces Washington National Opera's 2010-11 SeasonOr so says google. 34 minutes ago. Can't get the link to work.<br /><br />Ah, jeez. Ms. Midgette breaks it to us gently: "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/11/AR2010011103446.html?hpid=sec-artsliving">WNO's 2010-11 season to be filled with popular, less risky works.</a>"<br /><br /><br />Highlights include Racette as Iphigenie and Voigt as Salome. The rest--you got fingers, eh? Click like the wind!Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-71307781513408798962010-01-12T10:22:00.004-05:002010-01-12T11:27:48.780-05:00Surprise!First things first: season announcements are upon us. Last year it seems to me it was <a href="http://operatattler.typepad.com/">Opera Tattler</a> who pounced on them, so check there. Meanwhile, the nice folks at Spoleto emailed me (which I just now saw) about their season, now up <a href="http://www.spoletousa.org/">on their site</a>. Of particular interest to you lot, an opera called Flora:<br /><br />"A wronged heiress, a faithful lover, a resourceful maid and, of course, an avaricious uncle play out their roles in the first opera ever performed in the American colonies. Flora swept the British Empire in the 18th century as one of the first ballad operas with lyrics written to the accompaniment of popular tunes of the time. In 1735, Flora reached Charleston and was such a success it was repeated the following year in the first purpose-built theatre in America, the Dock Street Theatre. Now 274 years later, Flora returns to the Dock Street as the theatre reopens after three years of renovation, in a delightful production that will thoroughly illuminate just why this was a theatrical staple throughout the 18th century."<br /><br />What's not to like? I went to Spoleto twice as a teen, and it's divoon. Opera and chamber music in a historical, picturesque setting not far from the beach. It's like the next best thing to the Bermuda Couch Opera. Oh, wait, haven't gotten there yet.<br /><br /><br />***<br /><br />Anyway, I crawled out of the hiatal cave to go to--of all things--Stiffelio last night. May be kind of dead-blogging it later with Squirrel, so only a word or two now, or maybe seven paragraphs.<br /><br />You may know of the Bermuda Couch Opera, only probably you don't because it's an inside joke between me and J von Wellsung*. Anyway what you almost definitely don't know is that it is the BCO's policy not to perform any operas ending in -elio. To this bylaw was added a rider (I don't actually know what either of those words means) stating that in such operas as exclusively do not end in "-elio", no tenor shall be cast whose name terminates in "-ura."**<br /><br />I had actually wondered for years about Jose Cura, because he made such a splash somehow with his early recordings, be that because of the color and phrasing that suggested a large, dramatic voice, or the pictures that made plenty of listeners want to sing beloved 19-century opera duets with him, as one not-much-used euphemism would have it. There are two disappointing facts for which, I assume, the reality of the opera house rather than the ravages of time are responsible. One is that the voice isn't really that big or even that present--some growling went on as the evening went by, but none of it made any impression at all. The other is that, for the entire first act, he sang with a kind of careless, maybe even sloppy musicality that won him no love from me or my klatsch.<br /><br />God knows there was time to get around to any sort of commentary during the intermissions, which were as long as you've heard. My Least Favorite Intermissions, a line I'm surprised I haven't used before.<br /><br />Notable also on this night, Andrzej Dobber who I heard nothing particularly kind about after his debut as Amonasro sounded solid and refined as...oh which character is which is this silly opera...Stankar? Not kidding as usual, that's an actual character's name. Michael Fabiano, in whom all of us at the auditions that year feel a kind of investment I'll wager, didn't have a lot of opportunities to knock anyone over with Raffaele's music, but was in swell voice and cuts a fine figure on stage. <br /><br />Radvanovsky is a pet diva around here, so it won't surprise anyone when I agree with the enthusiastic opening night crowd. Opening night on a Monday, jeez. I'm going to start using the phrase "less fun than a Monday night Stiffelio" and see if it catches on. Let me know if you hear it like a year from now on a sitcom. Oh anyway right. I <i>still</i> feel like Radvanovsky is very strangely utilized at the Met, but I suppose Lina constituted a reasonable vehicle for her unique sound.<br /><br />The thing is I get people's gripes about the voice. It's peculiar. The vibrato can sound grainy, if that's not too intersensory a description, and depending on whether you're me or someone else this strikes you as individual and interesting or weird, respectively, I guess. There's not a lot of mezzo-forte available. But the impact of it when she cranks it into overdrive remains utterly visceral for me, and the floaty pianos are not overused and awfully pretty, so if there's not a lot between two compelling extremes, I can't find much cause to kvetch. And hey, if her acting remains unsubtle, at least she's in an appropriate rep for it. <br /><br />What I remembered last night is that the physical acting is secondary, as it might as well be in things with schlocky librettos. What she does, that I thought was what everyone wanted, is to find the pathos in the arch of a phrase, the "dying fall" if I'm clear on what Shakespeare meant by that. It's not a theatrical sense so much as a more broadly aesthetic one: this is not perhaps great drama, but as far as I'm concerned, it's great singing.<br /><br />Domingo conducted and I don't really have to tell you what that means.<br /><br />Next up: Bernarda Fink recital I'm not sure I'll blog because WTF do I know about lieder, and then dell'Arte's Anna Bolena. But before then look for the Maury & Squirrel show on like Friday.<br /><br /><br />*later inflated to a bit of internet weirdness by a third party altogether. Um, feel free to become a Friend of the Bermuda Couch Opera on facebook. Feel equally free not to.<br /><br />**special dispensations may be made in the case of Anthony Laciura, but not Shura Gehrman, who I'm not sure-a was a tenor.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-68588872728261550902010-01-08T11:12:00.000-05:002010-01-08T11:13:30.047-05:00Yeah.<a href="http://trrill.com/archives/music/opera/things_you_can/">Word.</a>Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-9126185930897051742010-01-04T23:16:00.008-05:002010-01-05T11:22:04.411-05:00Better yet<a href="http://tubedubber.com/#4BvBkTmDWBA:WEEvz6SuUNg:0:100:0:0:true">Wish I could take credit</a>. From the diabolical mind of Squirrel. Conceptualized by Stewball but then, er, executed by your favorite rodent. <br /><br />(I tried embedding this about a hundred times and it wasn't working. Just trust me on this one.)Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-31935829769802323292010-01-04T13:46:00.003-05:002010-01-04T13:49:46.789-05:00From the Funny/Disturbing File<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://music.todaysbigthing.com/betamax/betamax.swf?item_id=2441&fullscreen=1" width="480" height="360"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> <param name="movie" quality="best" value="http://music.todaysbigthing.com/betamax/betamax.swf?item_id=2441&fullscreen=1" /> </object><div style='padding:5px 0; text-align:center; width:480px;'>See more <a href='http://www.todaysbigthing.com/'>funny videos</a> and <a href='http://music.todaysbigthing.com/'>Music Videos</a> at <a href='http://www.todaysbigthing.com/'>Today's Big Thing</a>.</div><br /><br />According to the site whence I am embedding: "An Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you've ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it."<br /><br />Interestingly, this is also the backstory of the writing of <i>Vanessa</i>.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-62976114828784318002009-12-31T19:55:00.002-05:002009-12-31T20:13:49.895-05:00Your auld lang what hurts again?With apologies for radio silence (save for one bout of kvetching) I bid you the happiest time on Maury's Secretly Favorite Holiday. (See, everyone always says aw jeez New Year's is always such a letdown, and you'd have to be kind of the opposite of a killjoy, more a forcejoy, and nobody likes those either, to say "no, as a matter of fact it's always wonderful." So I mope along* and then secretly love the shit out of New Year's Eve.)<br /><br />Operatically not much going on. At some point I'll figure out how to post sound files and maybe post the thing I bought at Immortal Performances in Austin, or rather one track of it. Says I to Stewball, "I have a peculiar piece of Troyanos kitsch to send you. I wonder if you have it. I mean, you very likely have it." Says Stewball to me, startling me with his proximity since apparently he's been sitting in the dark balcony of my brain, "Is it the Pachelbel Canon or the Albinoni Adagio? Those I do have. Oh how I hope it's Rose's Turn from Gypsy." Sadly it is items 1 and 2, 3 being available only on a Mapleson cylinder. Mapleson being in this case Bogdan Mapleson, a janitor in Madame Troyanos' post-college walkup who taped her singing in the shower.<br /><br />Anyway the Albinoni is particularly amusing. She sings it as if pouring it out of a cement truck. <br /><br />In case you'd like to indulge in the New Year's tradition as is practiced where I whoop it up, or I guess I should use some anti-optative and say "if I may indulge it upon you," here is Madame Melba:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HHEYOwpWyFc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HHEYOwpWyFc&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />All the very best in this time of arbitrary but nonetheless viable new beginninging from the staff at MFI, which as you know is me and the cat. <br /><br />*Oh, it's second nature anyhow. Mope springs eternal hereabouts.<br /><br />Coming up: me trying to think about something to write about in January because I don't have a ticket in my name until February.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-56558907231085926912009-12-25T09:53:00.002-05:002009-12-25T09:58:56.460-05:00Alas. It's my old tradition to post on holidays when everything is closed but I'm currently (oh, don't ask why) on a bus, trying to drown out R&B with Yo La Tengo as we wind our way along state roads. Right, and praying for death. That too. But I have nothing in my head that's fit to post. Happy whatever. "Happy day off," as a friend of mine says.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-61654205086794491362009-12-17T21:18:00.000-05:002009-12-17T21:19:00.463-05:00Look here, y'awl<a href="http://www.theawl.com/2009/12/showed-up-elektra-at-the-metropolitan-opera">Lively discussion</a> of the Met's Elektra.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-51836854134627804212009-12-11T12:14:00.003-05:002009-12-11T12:52:44.471-05:00Stepping up in class (or: My Life as a Parterrorist)Well if you're looking here for my semi-coherent musings about Elektra, I must redirect you. Being asked to pen a <a href="http://parterre.com/2009/12/11/house-of-atreus-fall-collection/">piece for Parterre </a>when you are the resident scribbler of MFI, well it's sort of like the Paris Review called and said "you know those sonnets you wrote to your kitty? We simply must have them." <br /><br />I will say this: it's a different experience writing something that may be widely read instead of doing some equivalent to sitting in your bathrobe talking about it. So perhaps I'll put down a few more thoughts in the house style (idiotic) back here when I'm caught up on sleep.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-60908775267107712532009-12-04T09:36:00.009-05:002009-12-18T08:11:31.872-05:00Jar of EyeballsIf you've ever lived south of Ohio, you are perhaps aware that the world is divided into two kinds of people; those who can never drink tequila again because of that one night senior year, and people who can never drink southern comfort again because etc. I was the third kind: people who could never listen to Tales of Hoffmann again because of a production in college that was, I guess, through no individual misdeed, the equivalent if a night of bedspins and praying for death on the bathroom floor.<br /><br />As I sit here on the A train with Milton Cross whispering sweet nothings about Vina Bovy in my ear, I am a man transformed, renewed. I now recognize Tales of Hoffmann* as a work toward which I feel a mix of patient mockery and intermittent grudging admiration. <br /><br />Oh, shush. I'm exaggerating of course. Who could not love the Venice act, other than maybe Ekaterina Gubanova, who sang it quite well but was tepidly received at curtain calls for reasons I haven't worked out. Who indeed?<br /><br />Well Bartlett's Hair seems to like it, and <i>get</i> it. While I'm not delighted that last night's Hoffmann will now enter the cannon of critical cliches as this season's counterbalance to that Mean Nasty Tosca that Took Away Our Candlesticks, I can hardly hold that against the production. The Olympia and Giulietta acts, in particular, display a kind of ease with the operatic theatrical idiom that, for my money, Sher was visibly still learning in Barbiere.<br /><br />The Antonia act has some regie clunkers. I am srsly not going as far off topic as you think, but did you ever read the Hitchhiker's Guide books**? Douglas Adams writes of mankind's general tendency toward unhappiness: "Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." <br /><br />I keep flashing on this, because at times I'm fairly certain Bartlett Sher thinks the stories of the great operas have more to do with the movement of large rectangular panels than I think they do. This happens in the Antonia act, and it's jarring, because the Olympia Act is pure devilish visual invention, in particular one scene I refuse to spoil for you but that I think will be much talked about, maybe the stage tableaux of the season were it not for the tonally antipodal coups of House of the Dead. (I'm never right about this stuff, by the way.) Also, please, if you are considering becoming a major director of opera at an international house, pretty please do not have a violin float down from Above when someone is about to sing "Vois, sous l'archet fremissant" because no. But I'm harping on small stuff that bugged me, and not the many things that went right.<br /><br />Both of these acts, in any case, get some deluxe vocal characterization, though the second one starts out with Trebs' surprisingly blankish "Elle a fuit." I'm thinking if I were watching her do it from Seats Occupied By People Who Made Better Life Choices Than Maury (heretofore SOBPWMBLCTM should the topic ever arise again) it might have had some inspiration not visible from space, but I'm a little reluctant to invoke the whole visual/musical Gelb era debate, especially when speaking of Netrebko, who occupies a complicated place in that schema. <br /><br />Certainly the physicality of her performance as the role grows more frenetic is unrestrained and (guiltily?) pleasurable. Likewise, the vocal engagement with character, though I don't think it's a moment of greatness for AT. The D, sorta greschreilich in rehearsal, was a bolt of aural pleasure in full-on performance, but it's not a style of singing that seems natural to her. (What is, you might ask, and I'd fish out my record player and my record strategically scratched to say "Pucccini" over and over. Or big Italian lyric stuff anyway.) <br /><br />Hey have you heard people talking about the curse hanging over this production, by the way? Because of all the cast changes? It's worth taking a moment to think whether we have in fact lost much by the changes, right? <br /><br />Calleja for Villazon, well, who knows. Villazon as a concept might have been more dashing in passages like "Oh Dieu! De quelle ivresse," but Villazon as an actual singer would have given us all a terrible case of nerves. Calleja, despite being thirty and not 100% at home in the role, did not. Perhaps he was tired by the end, but generally speaking, he doesn't sound out of his depth in the role. I went back and forth between enjoying the basic sound, marveling at how jussily he bjorls--I know, the caprino is a bit much for some--and wishing for a little more give, a little more (forgive me) <i>swing</i>. Maybe opening night nerves, maybe more. He's a fine singer and I'm happy to wait and see, though something tells me if we're talking about him in twenty years, it will be for other roles.<br /><br />Kathleen Kim for 1/3 of Anna Netrebko is a pretty solid bargain. This would not have been a success; chez Mlle. Kim, it was a star turn despite here the smudge, there the hint of sharp. Good athletic vocalism, and an impressive ability to meet the role on its strange comic-but-not-actually-that-funny terms. I know already she's excellent as Madame Mao (Chicago Opera Theater, 2007ish) and now am curious if she'll find the shadow of regret that makes a Zerbinetta great or just go for the cute. Vocally, it's bound to work.<br /><br />Garanca for Lindsey I can't say much about, never having heard the former. Ms. Lindsey has a fine instrument and moves well on the stage and I think I'm going to enjoy her a lot in a different sort of role. Alan Held for Pape I'm also not sure how to ring up, but maybe these comparisons are a little stupid anyway. Held was vivid if not mesmerizing in stuff like "Scintille, diamant" and...I just don't know the Four Assholes' music well enough to speak with even feigned authority about it, so I'll refer you to other reviewers for more.<br /><br />I'm pretty sure Roberto Alagna was in attendance on account of this woman on the A Train Shuttle of Disappointment was talking <i>fortissimo</i> via cell to her father about having met him at an opera opening night, presumably the same. I couldn't actually hear her father's response, but I assume it was some combination of "how interesting" and "why are you calling me at 12:30 at night?" <br /><br />Side notes: youtube seems to be particularly full of interesting Hoffmann clips including lots of Dessay doing her freakish, arc-welding*** thing and some more clips to make you go Why Isn't Robert Carsen a Fixture at the Met God Dammit? Maybe I should embed one of those since pure text entries don't really catch anyone's eye.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6NIT5LfoAmo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6NIT5LfoAmo&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Next Up: ELEKTRA ELEKTRA ELEKTRA WHAT IS BETTER THAN ELEKTRA NOTHING IS, by Richard Strauss.<br /><br />*I would very much like it if my phone would stop insisting on Goffmann for Hoffmann. It is making me imagine an opera called Tales of Guffman in which a bunch of yokels think Peter Gelb is going to attend their awful little production which is much like, well, see paragraph 1. But when you get back here, you can stop reading. You don't have to go in loops, forever.<br /><br />**Embarrassing fact about your host: he cried at the death of Marvin the Robot when he was a little nerdling.<br /><br />***If I explained it, it wouldn't be funny.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-84762329235352450182009-11-26T19:30:00.007-05:002009-11-26T21:43:33.548-05:00More holiday funLet's maybe see how much blithering I can get in before I get tired of thumb-typing. <br /><br />Recent outings have included In the Red and Brown Water, the cause celebrish play by Three Name Playwright, Something Something McRaney (nuh-huh, it's too much trouble to multitask on here) at the Public. Heralded in some quarters as an almost epoch-making work...well, I'm going to go all Margo Tenenbaum to Mr. McRaney's Eli Cash and say this is specifically not a work of genius, though it's high quality stagecraft done with fervor by an ace ensemble so it's an east mistake to make. Listen, the guy is 29. There's time.<br /><br />Oh hey I'm on a real computer now. Where was I? I think where I was was emboldened by having seen the thumbnail review in the New Yorker to say more or less what an actual critic has said, which is that there's more vigour than rigour* but if you're just in it for a good ride, you could do a lot worse. It's involving and well-paced. I'm just not convinced it's awfully substantial and I <i>am</i> convinced it's not terribly new.<br /><br />The Brechtian device of actors speaking the stage directions (paging the estate of Virgil Thompson!) never really earns its weight in distraction, but the language is piquant and the direction tuned in to the play's ideal momentum. And beyond the fine sense of ensemble, there's not a bad performance in the lot, though some are subtler than others, where subtelty is to be wrung from a script full of enormous gestures.<br /><br />Oh, and if you go, and sit in the front rows, you may get audience-participationed, so be ready. I got terrorist-fist-jabbed by an actor (at which I made a face indicating "go easy on me with your complicated heterosexual handshakes. All I know I learned from Barack and Michelle." Yes, you have to have eyebrows of doom to convey all that in one grimaceous shrug.) and pulled into a high five of help-a-sister-out complicity on a funny exit line. So, y'know, caveat spectator if you're scaredy-cat about those things. <br /><br /><br />**<br /><br />It's good to revisit a production a year later and evaluate it from a settled place of familiarity. Sher's Barbiere struck me as more facile and un-involving on second viewing, for instance, whereas Jack O'Brien's Trittico (alright, in my case, Il Bittico) seems to me a production that may later be thought of as the kind of thing the Gelb administration does exactly right.<br /><br />And they've had the good fortune to get some casts that worked out really well. I still remember my delighted shock a year ago at the "why does this work?" Tabarro of Guleghina and Licitra, singers I thought of as past-prime who scored a real triumph in the piece. They're not, on balance, bettered by this year's exponents, but they're not shall we say worsed either. Ms. Racette would come back an hour later and sing a knockout Suor Angelica, but Giorgetta is something she doesn't have quite the right palette for. The style is good, and the acting can't be faulted. I think it's a matter of slancio, if I gotta be all Opera-L about things. <br /><br />If you checked out the link a day or two ago, you know how I feel about her pal Aleksandrs Antonenko, though. For me, it's pure ecstasy to hear a tenor voice fearlessly hurled around as he does. There's really nothing else to say about it. I'm quite thrilled at the idea of him taking on some things that have been gingerly managed by Heppner or unidiomatically muscled through by Botha. Oh, excitement.<br /><br />The way Lucic is used at the met mystifies me. On the evidence of his Germont, it's a sensitive lyric instrument of some quality, but every time they put him in dramatic stuff, it's just not great. I guess they're not drowning in dramatic singers but I hope they won't break Lucic by plugging him into this kind of thing.<br /><br />Suor Angelica is Not My Favorite Thing, as I've doubtless made clear. I'm bored for half an hour then horrified to the point of disengagement for fifteen and then the last quarter hour is of course exquisite but it's like flowers from an abusive boyfriend. Still it's hard to resist when it's delivered unstintingly, as Racette served it forth. Yes, yes, she busted a flat at the veeeery last moment of Senza Mamma at the prima. You'd rather hear this role cautiously? Other than her riveting, truly more-than-solid/reliable Jenufa, this is the best thing I've heard her do. It's an honor to do the whole triple crown at the big M, and she proved herself worthy. Uh, and she was probably great in Schicchi, too, but I was having margaritas. You want complete reviews, read a real reviewer, bub.<br /><br />Like the fellow who writes for the Post, for instance. I was interested to read that review, in part because it's become sort of a given that one will speak only praise of Stephanie Blythe, and Mr. Jorden (rarely one to throw a gratuitous punch, but never one to pull one) broke this rule. I mean I basically disagree, for once, about a lot of the plusses and minuses of this production, including Blythe who I have had my indifferent moments about and my fan moments (Orfeo!) but found pretty on-target as the least nuanced villain maybe in all of opera. <br /><br />The curtain calls for Angelica are always a laugh because it's like "hooray, seventh person dressed as a nun!" I'm ashamed to admit that I have a <a href="http://www.theconcert.blogspot.com">friend</a> in the production and was not 100% certain which nunly lines were hers since Angelica is not a work I've ever warmed to and so ever gotten to know in detail. Looking forward to hearing her later in the season in a role I know and love, that will be lovely in her voice and, well, she won't be surrounded by 40 people dressed exactly like her.<br /><br />Ok there was something or other else but I'm all blug out. Next up is the Hoffmann final dress, which of course I will only comment on in the most discreet and politic way.<br /><br />*I hardly know 'er, I hardly know 'er.<br /><br />[ETA: Oh, obviously I was going to write about House of the Dead. Only I'm not. Monday, Monday, sometimes it just works out that way.]Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-43378308595757076802009-11-26T05:36:00.003-05:002009-11-26T05:38:53.141-05:00The exact point of intersection between the terrible and the sublime<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EktVzsYjMJk&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EktVzsYjMJk&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Happy Turkey (Lurkey) Day, if such you celebrate.<br /><br />I'm up at an unaccustomed hour--yes, Tallulah, there are TWO five o'clocks in the day--to catch a train. Brain not really functioning but I'm telling myself later on I'll post about a couple of things I've seen lately.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-69214935297412059582009-11-24T23:19:00.001-05:002009-11-24T23:21:03.175-05:00A wondrful tnor.Aleksandrs Antonenko, my new musical crush.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oGmzn-tqJ2Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oGmzn-tqJ2Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Yeah, I know. I'm not remarkably writish lately.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-17386500222035866752009-11-12T23:58:00.004-05:002009-11-13T00:04:00.408-05:00Placeholder<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikzLwwT1faeVKJNsSJlAuhnC0BwWcUQrEjjWUMpctc_ZHRw9oUq7fzobGMynJSTBocgxUu-FkTiUuR0OlnTb51EYS338ts6VtJqAiuf8v3A4nlA6R-vovXpS6yIF6QjGgXsSxSzA/s1600-h/From_the_House_of_the_Dead_.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikzLwwT1faeVKJNsSJlAuhnC0BwWcUQrEjjWUMpctc_ZHRw9oUq7fzobGMynJSTBocgxUu-FkTiUuR0OlnTb51EYS338ts6VtJqAiuf8v3A4nlA6R-vovXpS6yIF6QjGgXsSxSzA/s320/From_the_House_of_the_Dead_.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403448656834414994" /></a><br /><br />Look, internets, if you're not going to cough up a photo of the exact moment from the prison drag pantomime I am after, how am I ever going to slip in the caption SURPRISE BUTTCZEKS?<br /><br />Tags: only potentially funny if you like(/tolerate) Janacek AND LOLcats.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-16822350664290026082009-11-11T14:01:00.006-05:002009-11-11T14:55:47.402-05:00Two-ferOk the blogging muse is not really with me lately but here's what I gots on two recent performances.<br /><br />1.<br /><br />So there I was in the downstairs gents' room at the Met (oh that is <i>not</i> where this is going, you beast! We are not that kind of blog!) when it suddenly and insistently popped into my head that perhaps if I started humming "a-amen a-a-a-a-a-a..." the next fellow would get a look of guilty complicity on his face and then pick up the tune and then, two urinals down...well, no. I didn't try it. I think maybe that kind of thing makes one look a tiny bit <i>not right</i>, as Southern parlance has it. (In the south you actually pronounce the italics when you say it.) You'd pretty much have to get to the urinal uh...bank? stand? just as a bunch of other giant raging geekosauri were answering the call.<br /><br />Oh this was at Faust, if that wasn't clear. Sorry for starting the story in the middle except that there isn't that much story. A kind friend helped us get good seats; we had both liked the production a lot last year and wanted to see it with what was, on paper, a better cast. Well, sometimes things look good on paper for the excellent reason that they are good.<br /><br />Ramon Vargas is 49. I don't know if this is a tenor's prime--really I'd expect it's past it, but he's in fact quietly sidestepping the idea of prime by finding the virtue in each era of his voice. Though he sang the ferocious Rosenkavalier aria earlier in the season without much problem, it no longer sound wholly comfortable when he sings in the heights. (Though if they cast him as Usnavi in <i>In the Heights</i> I would definitely go.) And indeed, he dodges the pair of C sharps in the duet here, but it was all around a more appropriate sound than Giordani made last year. The phrasing was elegant if more placid than passionate, and the voice itself healthy and sweet. Like bananas.<br /><br />Borodina often strikes me as a singer who knows that her instrument is one that pavlovianally produces the word "opulence" in later descriptions and rests a little on her laurels. This is not a bad thing. Maybe I've never heard her entirely let loose, but I think of her Dalila, her Laura, and so forth with a nostalgic reverence that will be insufferable in about fifteen years. My first indelible memory of her is a radiant high whatever-note-ends-the-Inn-Scene-in-Boris-Godunov. Fortunately, this took place in a production of Boris Godunov. Unfortunately, I was rushing out the door to find the fabled Opera Quiz. Also a little unfortunately, that range hasn't really hung onto its lustre entirely since then--<i>on dit</i> that the chain smoking has not helped--but Marguerite is fairly safe territory for her voice, where it is now. I'm curious what rep she'll settle into over the next few years, and won't be at all disappointed if it's heavier, lower, Germaner. <br /><br />Yeah, it was kind of giggle-inducing when her giant head first floated across the screens of this rather beautiful production, but the thing about LePage as opposed to a more traditional envisioner of stagecraft is that it isn't so disruptive if something's a little funny. It really does fuck things up some if you get a nervous laugh in the middle of a deeply literal production. Here, it passes, one of many moods. And the next one is awe, because she really...it's something about the phonetic placement of vowels in Russian vis-a-vis French, maybe, that makes for a frequent lack of perfectly idiomatic utterance but an extra edge in depth and pathos. And though I've said before she sometimes seems a little less than convinced by the material she's presenting (a slight edge of sarcasm in Gioconda sometimes maybe?) she never phones it in.<br /><br />Ildar Abdrazakov had the stiffest competition in terms of last year's cast. John Relyea is at the very least extremely competent in this rep (I hear people say they find him uninspired; I can't say I do) but if I had to choose...I think I'd probably pick Ildar. Do you suppose when he and Olga started going out the Russian tabloids called them Ilga or Oldar? (Sometimes I like to imagine people in other countires give a fuck about opera.) He manages, by the verve of his singing, to make you almost forget that hat. That pen-hat combo. He sings the WTF out of the hat, I'm saying. It's an extremely comfortable fit vocally and characterologically. <br /><br />This particular night we witnessed a slightly nerve-shattering tech fail, one of the many screens having a dramatic issue with authority, but it was near the end and didn't cause a great delay. It was jarring (and loud) but it was a total "on" night at the Met and I don't imagine it ruined the opera for anyone.<br /><br />2.<br /><br />Say, remember that time we all got together and improvised a fugue of "Why should I go to Turandot when the Met is having notable trouble assembling a worthwhile cast?" Well, I am improvising a countersubject to that fugue, and it goes a little like this: the Met has just assembled a <i>fantastic</i> cast for Turandot, fuck yeah! Right, I know, "fuck yeah" is not a line I can pull off. <br /><br />I'd have to look to see if Lindstrom has any more in the run, and I'm sort of not having one of those days where an extra keystroke seems acceptable, but listen. If she is, go. Me, I did this whole Freudian parapraxis thing where I almost made myself late for the show because who wants to sit through a whole scant 1:45 of opera, even if it's like seven once the Met gets through with intermissions, when it's just going to be a rueful rehashing of the other casts they've gotten together for T'dot because somebody's gotta sing it?<br /><br />I'm thrilled I did not. Reason #1 may be Giordani. I am finding lately that the radio accentuates the stuff about his voice that rubs me wrong (though the fact remains that his interpolated C at the end of Act II owes rather too much to a 1973 Buick trying to start in the winter of 2001.) In house it is strong, fearless, go-for-broke singing. Yes, I'd like him to have a few lessons with my roommate Abe from college* or maybe a drag queen about how to make more of a gesture out of gonging a gong, but I can find nothing else, besides that one C, to fault him with. Terrific stuff. Even oversang the irritating decision to place some brass in Score Desk at the end. Also, while I'm on the subject of tenors, I think we had a sorta pre-celebrity sighting, to wit: the terribly promising Michael Fabiano.<br /><br />Maria Poplavskaya, as you have read elsewhere, has a voice that's strangely matched to Liu. Essentially a success in the role, and in its distance from complete success for me lay the suggestion that this voice may well be important to us in coming years in other roles. If memory serves, she's thought to be the replacement for Trebs in the Decker Traviata, when and if it comes to us, and I for one can't wait. A Friend of This Blog (well ok, just a friend of mine) once succinctly and mercilessly dismissed a certain soprano currently approaching ubiquity--alright, Diana Damrau--saying "you walk down the halls of a conservatory and hear exactly that sound coming from about a dozen practice rooms." Poplavskaya is the negative embodiment of that statement. It's a sound with face, with a certain built-in room for darkness and introspection. I'm very curious to hear more.<br /><br />Lindstrom is a slightly more complicated case, I guess. It's hard to think what rep she's going to kill in, outside of Turandot, in which she's certainly quite exciting. The couple of growly utterances in the role, as earlier noted, are in an underdeveloped range, but it's tough to get too sad about it when the Turandot notes are so big and so bright, delivered with such a lack of the "oh shit am I gonna make it?" quality of basically everyone else I've ever heard sing it. (It isn't wholly the quality of the voice, you know, that makes the primary soprano in the run a poor choice. Some of it is the palpable deer-in-the-headlights-of-an-oncoming-orchestra effect, that could only add to the character of Turandot if you have a sort of Lars von Trier sensibility.) Anyway Lindstrom's bio notes that she sings some thing that might be really great and some I'm not so sure about, but whatever the case, she can certainly go around now telling anyone she chooses that she was at the center of a brilliant night of Puccini singing on this august stage. <br /><br />It remains a privilege to hear the voice of Samuel Ramey, the moreso (do I totally overuse that construction? I think so. I'll shop around for an upgrade but not right now.) when he's singing a role where the sonic treadmarks of time are not only easily excused, but appropriate. <br /><br />Next up: Z Mrtveho Domu!<br /><br />*no shit, if he had a cigarette in his hand, turning on the light was like a whole scene out of Now, Voyager.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-64047134314504635912009-11-02T11:03:00.006-05:002009-11-02T11:33:33.918-05:00From the shallow end of the think tankI get these ideas lodged in my cranium and they won't go away.<br /><br />So you know how singers do Tribute to [Extremely Dead Singer] albums? Dawn Upshaw's Jane Bathori thingy, Bartoli helling around with Maria Malibran, Joyce DiDonato's recent...<br /><br />Wait stop there. Joyce DiDonato, you say? Me, I mean. You probably didn't say it unless you read out loud. Say, what if she were to do <i>another</i> tribute album where, well I'll give you hints and you can guess the theme.<br /><br />1) She's wearing a white wig on the cover that follows the Texan maxim: the higher the hair, the closer to god.<br /><br />2) She might also be wearing what one friend of the tribute-object termed "appalling American clothes" if she can be persuaded to doff her habitual good taste in favor of a gamine sense of kitsch.<br /><br />3) Highlights of the disc might include (oh I'm just giving it away now) Berio's divoon folk song do-ups, a set including Pergolesi's "Ticket to Ride," and perhaps a bonus track of "Surabaya Johnny."<br /><br />C'mon, you know it'd be great. I can't <i>help</i> it. It's my ipod's fault. You start going down a road of "mezzo...keen intellect...sense of adventure" and where does it get you?<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5rErTJPvIO39ImiOiwTofy3ugosTc9E3xPZxmSy8OxtI_xlWTQIXOQu4kEGEr-Aj7zyt-0OpT5ZfeRcQd3H7-o4aaXrpeKEUUzR81GdTinLFboIez-1HoX_5LlLOLmWqtOiyZvA/s1600-h/Joyce+on+Wheels.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5rErTJPvIO39ImiOiwTofy3ugosTc9E3xPZxmSy8OxtI_xlWTQIXOQu4kEGEr-Aj7zyt-0OpT5ZfeRcQd3H7-o4aaXrpeKEUUzR81GdTinLFboIez-1HoX_5LlLOLmWqtOiyZvA/s320/Joyce+on+Wheels.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399541927548406130" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnWQosD6NyYyIXjplxM3KEepv7tKIxIk6IyyXxvYDLcXzbcK_86HKG-DvhmEpJeljv9_rdkO7j0A6Y1VLkG2RmAEBaxdqJrD39StTNhyphenhyphenBAaYqZGzUN1dlVnYmNXgXhCnp_p5SYw/s1600-h/Cathy+the+Barbarian.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnWQosD6NyYyIXjplxM3KEepv7tKIxIk6IyyXxvYDLcXzbcK_86HKG-DvhmEpJeljv9_rdkO7j0A6Y1VLkG2RmAEBaxdqJrD39StTNhyphenhyphenBAaYqZGzUN1dlVnYmNXgXhCnp_p5SYw/s320/Cathy+the+Barbarian.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399542067225805266" /></a><br /><br /><br />[With all due apologies to the object of this game of vocal paperdolls, which we all like to play.]Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-3240021027072879902009-10-30T14:58:00.002-05:002009-10-30T14:59:21.283-05:00Tosca II (Scarpia 0)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnxQuVaEAMOV3wc-KSDAW2mGQgBP1ExucBWs0B0dF58udSJOq4nx4GX8WRtqJtWi3ThhmZZhP4mwj7oltJql0KgZVeu9OvgnZCJYoSp5Xegb_Zs9yX0Yq8Af6CBlt-7HgMU59ebA/s1600-h/Tosca+II+Scarpio+0.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnxQuVaEAMOV3wc-KSDAW2mGQgBP1ExucBWs0B0dF58udSJOq4nx4GX8WRtqJtWi3ThhmZZhP4mwj7oltJql0KgZVeu9OvgnZCJYoSp5Xegb_Zs9yX0Yq8Af6CBlt-7HgMU59ebA/s320/Tosca+II+Scarpio+0.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398485058547231810" /></a><br /><br />Sequels are just <i>never</i> as good but I'll admit I'm curious...Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-22360801862851648862009-10-29T10:21:00.004-05:002009-10-29T13:22:17.066-05:00A Boston PilgrimageNot in the writiest of moods but sometimes I say that and then the tactile pleasure of typing takes over. And it does seem like a tease to post the Podles marquee and then not say anything. You might call it marquee sadism, if you were something awful. Anyway I thought it might be a lark to write a Podles review in which the word "cavernous" is, just this once, allowed to stay home in its bathrobe, so here's me doing that.<br /><br />You know how I feel about EP, so I'll start elsewhere and you can skip the end if you're not in the mood for that kind of thing. For the rest of y'uns (is that a Boston regionalism or somewhere else? It sounds a little too rural, middle class and not Back Bay in any case) harken to the tale of Amanda Forsythe, a young soprano I'm eager to hear again, ideally in a context where she isn't done up to look like she's about to sing "The Grass is Always Greener" with Raquel Welch. Well now I'm just trying to be obscurely funny but truly, they were not going for glamour here. <br /><br />Anyway she was pretty excellent as Amenaide, not excellent like "oh wow, Opera Boston must have spent a lot on Ewa Podles but it's nice they have some local talent to bask in her glow" but rather, impressive independent of other considerations. The voice is happy in the heights, effortless in fioratura, and, y'know, purdy. Good thing, because what you forget when you're a Podles fanatic is that Amenaide is a big role with lots of good music. In fact, me being me, I forgot that Tancredi is largely pleasurable throughout, containing a great deal of enjoyable music (here conducted so buoyantly, on top of that, by Gil Rose that I didn't catch Rossini Fatigue even once, which is rare. Gil Rose, CILMOW, for those of you who rely on MFI as the Tiger Beat of opera blogs. What, Conductor I'd Like to Make Out With. This was not obvious?) <br /><br />You know how we go through periods where we have good voices in different categories, and I get all impatient because everyone's so busy shooting themselves because we don't have much by way of Wagner singers that they forget we have about a grillion fantastic lyric tenors? I am wondering if light high lyrics are now in ascendence, thinking of some of the swell coloraturism I have heard of late--one the bus back from Boston, for instance, I was reminded to do a nervous little dance at some point in expectation of Kathleen Kim's Zerbinetta as I listened yet again to Rusalka (she's one of the Hou Hou Hou girls.) Maybe not though. I tend to generalize in moments of what ought to be discrete satisfaction.<br /><br />Generally the rest was well-cast also, though with here and there a misgiving. Yeghishe Manucharyan doesn't stand out in a world with Florez and Brownlee hogging the spotlight, but has many fine qualities of his own. Unlike those fellows, he shies away from Rossini money notes, but in the mortal range, sings a gratifyingly articulate line. Victoria Avetisyan has something of a jabby top few notes but sings with gravity and taste below them. <br /><br />But I was there for Podles, as is known. I fear it may turn out to have been the last time I will hear her*, as her scrupulously maintained fan site lists nothing beyond a Wigmore Hall recital and, unless they finish the transatlantic highway by then, I'm probably skipping that one. I actually did the Eve Harrington thing after the performance and asked if she had anything coming up in New York or Boston and she was fairly shruggish about it. <br /><br />She's not quite who you'd expect in person, by the way. She comes off as such a character in interviews and of course onstage, you irrationally expect her to be flamboyant even at the end of a long night of singing, and then in fact she is quietly friendly, reserved though also subtly funny. I gave her the booklet from the Italian Orfeo recording to sign (the French one is better but my copy disappeared five years ago and it's opportunistically priced when found used on Amazon) and she looked around for a good place to sign, eventually looking me in the eye to say in the world's best deadpan, "maybe on the breast?" <br /><br />Shockingly, for someone who is rumored to have offered to make her Act III entrance in Gioconda by throwing herself down a staircase, she also looks a little frail nowadays. And, in contrast to her stage presence, which remains heroic, she has begun to sound a little frail. The head-wagging that in the last few years has become so pronounced and that apparently serves to fling the voice around her mutant oltrano range now accomplishes something like flinging, but slower. Flownging. Hrm, not so much. Anyway the notes are still all there, but the effort is greatly more evident and though she can get the top to blaze, for the early part of the evening it is sheathed, perhaps taking a while to warm up. This means in "di tanti palpiti," where you'd expect her to pop the most wheelies, she actually stays mostly on the ground.<br /><br />But remember how she used to toss high B's around like she didn't care if it lasted forever? That it has not lasted forever is 100% compensated for by the memory of all that. (Phraseology intentional so you will know whether to try to take that away from me.) The commitment to go-for-broke dramatic gesture remains what it was, as does the rakish and frequent channeling of Alexander Kipnis. Oh, a little bit hilariously but mostly wonderfully, her entrance was staged in a way that, outside of an opera stage, suggested professional wrestling or an Iron Chef spinoff or something: a section of the back wall was raised slowly, the stage in darkness, Podles silhouetted by intense backlighting. Cheezy, but in the best way.<br /><br />I just read Heidi Waleson's thing and am wondering if I've become that sort of devoted fan who doesn't notice glaring flaws, as she apparently found Podles to have all the presence of a hulking pot of kasha, but actually I don't agree with half of what she said so I guess it's just the usual matter of de gustibus a son gout. We both think Amanda Forsythe is a gem, though, as do the local reviewers I also just read, who tended to be more Rah Rah Podles.<br /><br />Be all of that as it may, a certain kind of through-going glory hid behind the flaws and the shabbyness of this detail or that. My lovely friend who went with me is not an opera person, per se, loves Callas--as one does--and was persuaded by my nauseating enthusiasm to check out Mama P. Just as he shared my adoration for her, I share his appreciation for--and mind you, this isn't about camp or the queer fascination with the eternal feminine in extremis--greatness in its decadent phase. In the worn patches of this peculiar voice are the grooves and etchings of the moments of heedless generosity that made them and acknowledged, each in passing, the debt of bliss to impermanence.<br /><br />And so I have heard, for perhaps the last time in the flesh, my iconic diva, this blog's muse. Many of you fans of other great figures of the vocal stage who will no longer sing to you (unmediated by our beloved but incomplete means of preserving what's gone) will know the melancholia of this moment. Of course it's 100% possible the Podles blog simply hasn't been updated and she's singing Annie Get Your Gun in Newark in July, but I can't help visiting the moment of sadness that may or may not happen because I'm like that. When a favorite is gone, there will be others, but none to occupy exactly the same space in one's inner life, eh? <br /><br />***<br /><br />Last night's broadcast of Turandot inspired a rather expected hateathon on the Parterre chat, but suggests to me that Lindstrom may be one of those freak voices that largely sits just right for Turandot. True, I have no notion of loudness from a broadcast, and yeah, there was something fishy about the "si, la speranza che delude sempre" outburst that raised questions about the availability of the low register, but I'm certainly looking forward with some excitement to November 10. And that's what's next up on my dance card.<br /><br />*srsly I futzed with the tenses in this clause for a while and then gave up. I'm glad English has only the laziest of subjunctives or I'd be publishing this next month.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17999907.post-15217768128013111832009-10-28T20:34:00.003-05:002009-10-28T20:41:04.704-05:00cold storageLast entry put in mothballs. Seems tacky to speak cheekily of the canceled.Maury D'annatohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14136129943169313348noreply@blogger.com0