Hope you're hungry!

Well then. There's really just no good way to go about this other than go down the list I think, just pour it all out and print it and edit when someone says "but Maury, you dear, doddering old thing, nobody dies in Die Fledermaus." Actually it's true: very little editing goes on here at My Favorite Intermissions. Well act surprised. Raise your eyebrows or something. Anyway if this becomes interminable, though I guess I'll skip orchestral and choral numbers, I encourage you to scan down the page for the names you're interested in. I mean, let's be honest: I'm not gonna know.

Last night the Metropolitan Opera threw its big five hour fete for outgoing boss Joseph Volpe, only as parties go it was in some ways rather staid--the only person who appeared to be drunk, even, was Mirella Freni. People sang, and people spoke, and there was a big sentimental film about the Volpe era/regime (depends upon who you are I guess) in which a retired chorus member said Franco Zefirelli "just about fell out" when Volpe did something or other. I forget what because the idea of FZ falling out was just too grand. If you're from the south, you'll get it, ok?

The two original numbers written for the gala were tittery and in the spirit of very gentle roasts and, I'd have to say, not really as clever as "Wagner Roles," the song Mr. Moore wrote for Deborah Voigt many seasons back. Her number, "We're Very Concerned" had a by now somewhat expected "I lost lots of weight" reference (and here we pause to note how nice she looked) and a rather jaw-dropping potshot at Kathleen Battle. Not to overstate things...he didn't accuse her of sorcery or anything. Maybe it's that people were speculating on whether she might be a surprise guest a few weeks ago, but it just struck me as a little shocking, though funny, that a song for a huge, expensive gala took a very specific swipe at a person who will no doubt hear of it. Voigt was armed with a microphone and her customary game and articulate way with light music.

Juan Diego Florez followed with "La speranza piu soava" from Semiramide sung in very long breaths and with undiminished sweetness. The high notes were such as anyone would envy. After this, more Rossini on the Olga and Ildar show, and here's where the truly lamentable programming began. I would find myself wondering as the evening went on if the artists chose their numbers themselves. If so, someone please have a talk with Olga and Ildar. The Italiana duet was an awful fit, like one of those nights on American Idol (which I've watched about thrice, I'm serious) where some 18 year old cheerleader from Plano dukes it out with Rogers & Hart. It sounded like Simionato and Pinza or whoever that was, only this was "Anything you can sing, I can sing less idiomatically." No you can't, yes I can, yeah you're right.

Placido Domingo proved he speaks Spanish in case you thought the ethnic thing was an act. Frederica von Stade proved that some people age better than...I started to say better than others but why not get one last barb in and say "some people age better than Aprile Millo." I think I will. I think I did. Ruth Ann Swenson proved that she really was sick and not just playing hooky from the afternoon's Elisir. Say, who was her cover, and how did she do? Bill Irwin flounced inexplicably around the stage to the Onegin Polonaise.

And a strange thing happened to me during the next number. I spent all of the recit ("Ah, se una volta sola...") and most of the aria ("Ah! Non credea mirarti") wondering if the pinchy quality about Dessay's voice is forever going to keep me from enjoying her singing despite its obvious craft and quality. In that way that the past wrecks things for us sometimes, I always think she's about to have the effortless spin of Mesple, but that's just not her sound. And then, from the first instant of the cabaletta ("Ah! I begin all my utterances with 'Ah!' and by the way, non giunge!") that thing happened that only happens maybe twice a season. It feels like electricity entering through my feet and crawling up my spine. I wonder if maybe I have an idea what it was like, now, to hear the young Sutherland--different sounds, obviously, but that same daredevil sense of "fuck you, I can sing anything." The house shared my pleasure.

The same house gave a surprising, markedly cold shoulder to Dwayne Croft. Wonder what that's about. He didn't really own the Count's Aria as in olden days, but he didn't suck.

So then on sails Denyce Graves dressed, apparently, as a mermaid and sings "Can't Help Mispronouncin' dem Pronouns of Mine." This could not have been her idea. I do think Showboat is a masterpiece, but, um...yeah. Her diction throughout was puzzlingly non-native, her famous commitment and her vocal unevenness equally in evidence, and the audience gasped en masse as she ended the piece on a low Z or something. It's not for me to know whether this was a gasp of admiration or aesthetic bewilderment. Or, hell, who knows, some of those folks in Orchestra may simply never have seen a black person.

Say, do you remember the time when I was all "Renee Fleming in Verdi will be something to cheer about!"? Can we pretend that conversation didn't happen? Thing is, she in fact made much less of an expressionist masterpiece out of "Tacea la notte" than she has made lately of Manon, to name the most grave offense. If it was not on par with Radvanovsky, it was at least pretty. But also at most pretty, I'm afraid. I don't know where this Fleming train is headed is what I'm getting at. I have to admit in the cabaletta I could think only of the standard criticism of the Fleming bashers: there was, as they say, no note produced at a single volume. Each one was a tiny "pace, mio dio!" And that's just too much. I guess the jury's still out, but I'm not what you'd call optimistic.

James Morris sang "Bill Frist ist um" (you know--from The Flying Right Wing Nutjob) and erased some unfond memories of his Scarpia.

I, for one, was rather excited to see that Meier was singing the death of Didon, but it didn't really pan out, I'm sincerely sorry to say. I'm thinking Waltraud maybe just doesn't translate. The gestures were grand and her choice of gowns triggered a certain existential nausea that was interesting in its way, but the specter of LHL stood there impatienty, tapping its spectral foot. Phonetically and stylistically, a bit of an abortion; dramatically, neither fleischig nor milchig, with here and there a declamatory wallop. Did I say how much I liked her Kundry? [Listen, I'm sorry this is turning into such a laundry list, devoid of narrative flow. I was serious, though: hit control F and scan for Mirella Freni if that's what you're after. Not for nothing, it's also almost 1:30 again and this time a school night, so this is looking like a two parter.] Meier's partner of a few nights ago, the occasionally wonderful Ben Heppner, trotted out the Meistersinger prize song in excellent voice.

I really couldn't disagree when La Cieca dubbed Kiri Te Kanawa "the world's highest paid church soprano" many years ago. And yet, in certain rep the simplicity of her singing works out to something quite moving. I still recall the way the air went out of my lungs when this singer I thought of as bloodless sang "Madeleine! Madeleine!" into her mirror in that one Capriccio broadcast. Marietta's Lied in the gala had a little of this quality, and maybe the wear on the voice lent a little pathos. God knows it's not in bad shape--Te Kanawa left the opera stage before any real decline happened, and at its best the voice was like...like what Fleming would sound like if she'd shut up and sing. That good.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wished, upon seeing Stratas' brief, warm tribute in the film segment, that she had been the surprise guest. (Not to keep you guessing, there was no surprise guest, except Mirella Freni's senile dementia.) It was the same feeling of nostalgia and regret, I'm afraid, that Voigt's reading of Sieglinde's aria provoked. Once a vocal marvel that felt aimed individually at you as you sat in your cheap seats, her Du Bist der Lenz is still radiant but on a much smaller scale. Over the course of the past season I've grown less and less confident that the new, reduced Voigt is quite the voice we knew before.

To close the first half, Domingo sang "Granada." Agustin Lara is a wonderful song writer who penned such gems as "Despues" and "Piensa en mi," but Granada is more a snowglobe in music, a little, local bit of kitsch. I seriously can't fathom what was going on when they planned this.

Alright, go mill around in the lobby now, and have a cup of coffee. Maury's gonna hit the sack and finish this later.

INTERMISSION

And now the season is really, truly over.

Holy jebus was that a lot of opera.

I'm obviously blogging it later. It's 1:30.

Talk about your out of town tryouts!

Didn't I say she'd be great in this rep?

Next year Sandra Radvanovsky sings her first Lucrezia Borgia...in the Canary Islands!

Whereupon Maury might should look into Witness Protection programs

I've heard it said that when Magda made her Met debut at age 104, as Tosca, apparently with the same delicious lack of subtlety onstage that marks her recordings, all the queens could say to each other at intermission was, "and then she saw the knife!" You can imagine the mix of adoration and ridicule, I think. Tosca, as a piece of theater, as a brilliant piece of crap, presupposes laughably outsize gestures. If you ask me, the one from last night that's going to get the most play is unquestionably the moment when Millo, having screwed her courage to the sticking place with a supersized swig of chianti, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shook it dry like a quarterback chugging gatorade. Certainly for me this was the biggest laugh, and I saw a number of sort of vicious imitations of it after the fact. One wit added, bewilderingly but rather devastatingly, "like she just finished a goddamn pot of matzoh brei."

Well, I'm neither slain in the spirit nor wholly unconvinced, which is more than a little disappointing. I can't really trash Millo entirely or discount the enormous ovation she got, on account of she mostly didn't suck and did have moments of glory. The voice, at this stage of the game, is a rather ugly one with a few fascinating features I imagine have always been there and are the reason for all the to-do. The big, rich Tebaldi register is, I am forced to concede, quite unique on the opera stage these days, as far as I know. And as far as Italianate phrasing, when she's on, she's on, and I'm grateful to hear it. And when she's off, she sings like the rotting corpse of Maria Caniglia, to wit: much of Act I.

And the crazy thing about Villa is that he's a perfect tenor version of Millo. The top is loud and frayed and hints at unreliability but mostly makes it. The phrasing has its old school moments, very gratifying. I can't argue with his "e lucevan," though the rest of the evening his tone was wearying, like a long argument. Here perhaps I've overreached and the similarity ends...whereas his acting chops are a bit coarse, her basic manner of inhabiting a character is, in this opera about a bunch of Catholics, vulgar in a way I'd always associated more with Southern Baptism. And then she sings the beginning of the big aria with an exquisite line and I forgive her. And then (yes I know I'm going out of order--think of it as a postmodern narrative) she sings "egli vedi ch'io pianga" and though it's absolutely nothing special and owes much of the breadth of the "vedi" to the large breath before "ch'io pianga", her fans begin to applaud mid-scene with the inevitability of death and taxes, and I unforgive her. At least at this one, they didn't shoosh ovations for other singers, as I witnessed at the (vocally much more succesful) Fanciulla at OONY, where the overall concentration of mouthbreathers is for some reason always higher, a year ago.

I think the reason I never give the Millo a break is that her fans seem not to forgive her faults so much as to cognitively suppress them. In an OONY benefit concert in '99 at Alice Tully, Millo sang "Pace, mio dio" sort of well and ended it quite flat (as, in fact, she ended Vissi d'arte--the final note was, in horseshoes and hand grenades terms, close enough, but the one before it was...actually the same note, which it ain't supposed to be.) But then she made that gesture of snatching something out of the air which is international sign language for "applaud or I break your face" and the house exploded. Someone else has an off night, they get a slightly diminished ovation, you know? It happened to Heppner, quite recently. And while there was no snatching of invisible handkerchiefs out of the air tonight, there was so much swanning about with arms outstretched, at times I thought she might be about to pick a fight with Luana DeVol.

I'm done picking on Morris I guess, except to say RETIRE RETIRE RETIRE DAMMIT RETIRE. And if you're going to sing like that, try not to do it within fifteen minutes of Kyle Ketelsen, whose comparative freshness and solidity carry a doubltess unintentional subext of: RETIRE, BITCH. Tonight was actually better than the prima, but I despair of forever seeing the world's best entrance music lavished on someone who can't run with it.

And with that, except for a special event that's really its own self contained big deal, the Met season is over for Maury. My first season as a blower of hot air, a blogstress, a reviewer if to say so isn't grandiose. I've never had such a season, truly. I think I went to every production but two (Aida, Elisir), many on opening night with pen at least imaginarily in hand, some of them twice. There was filth and there was dementia, as Dickens once wrote, only I promise not to launch into a teary retrospective on you...

Next up and probably last for a while, though there is Caramoor over the summer: Volpedammerung.

An imaginary Parsifal you won't want to miss [...and other loose ends from my brain]

The nice thing about sitemeter is you can see what odd queries brought people to your blog (well, most of them actually aren't odd. To be honest, most of them are the names of Met Council Audition finalists. Dear Holli Harrison, thanks for all the hits! xo, Maury) and then you can see what other stuff came up on the same searches. Which landed me at this really funny Parsifal coming soon to a theater near you, or more likely not. Ok, usually, the word "this" would be a clicky link, only blogger.com and my computer are having a fight, so I'll just show you the URL:

http://micaelabaranello.blogspot.com/2006/05/when-i-direct-parsifal.html

This in particular kind of killed me:

The Holy Spring will be on stage. Preferably, a deep pool with a small waterfall. Whenever anyone is baptized, they will be dumped into it. None of this "few drops of imaginary water on the top of the head" crap. In Act I, the trainee knights dump Amfortas right off his litter and into it as well. All must make a reappearance a few bars later, soaking wet and gasping for air.

I've been back on a Gencer bender, me. In my spare time. And also grooving on Lisitsian, yesiree Bob. And I stumbled upon a cheap-enough-I-couldn't-not copy of the Cigna/Olivero/Merli Turandot at Academy. I'd always wanted to hear it. In fact, it's...flawed but compelling. What's with Cigna anyway? I knew her first from a "Suicidio!" from I believe sometime around the same year as the Turandot, only she sounds rock solid there. In the Norma I have, she's a bit of a spaz, likewise the Turandot. Not unenjoyably so, but I wish it sounded more like the Suicidio. Ah well. Also just downloaded Neko Case's "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" but that's neither here nor opera.

Or: Never attend Five Hour Operas on Five Hours of Sleep

Fetch me a bib, Eunice! I'm fixin' to eat my words.

What I'd like to say right off the bat is Ben Heppner just gave a very fine performance in Parsifal, full of fire and music; one that is certainly making me rethink my proclamation that he's an essentially lyric tenor who's always going to fail in big boy roles. I'm still not sure what I think about this whole Siegfried notion, but in any case it's causing me substantial cognitive dissonance that the singer I heard tonight was the same one I heard on the broadcast two weeks ago as a very troubled Lohengrin. This was solid, fearless, and fairly loud.

I wonder if the tessitura is simply a happier place for him or whether perhaps he needs to be able to move about spontaneously to produce a healthy sound. I know when I took my semester or two of largely fruitless voice lessons in college, my teacher would sometimes downgrade the sound from strangled to merely pinched by tossing a ball back and forth with me. So, not to buy into Domingo's whole "Robert Wilson made me sick," mythos, but some singers more than others may in fact find their voices don't flow so freely when they're doing underwater yoga. Whatever happened, this was really good, really non-nerve-wracking singing, and I wonder what all the cancellation talk was about. Anyway, let it not be said that I'm dogmatic in my judgments of singer, though just to firm up my reputation for being a deeply negative person, I do suppose it bears mention that his acting continues to run the gamut from Gilligan to Skipper.

Listen, by the way, I slept through a certain portion of this evening's performance, so maybe I shouldn't even be talking. I'm deeply ashamed (as is evidenced by my public announcement of the fact)--I've only ever fallen asleep at the opera one other time, that being in Houston in the 90's when someone had just dusted off that week's Totally, Not Kidding This Time, Definitive Version of Boris Godunov. Anyone would have fallen asleep, trust me. Until they dig up a version with a big torchy Act I closer and some really sassy backup singers for BG, I'm busy that night.

I don't know what to say except it was a really long week. Act I is achingly beautiful music, and I am going to aesthetic hell for what I did.

But let's talk about Waltraud Meier. Did you ever get off on the wrong foot with a singer and then discover later she's utterly divoon? Exhibit A: that French Don Carlos from like ten years ago. Meier's contribution I recall as ghastly beyond words. Well tonight, kids, she brought the demented. Sure, we all get a bit skeptical when a mezzo decides she's going to fach up, as they say in certain parts. Y'know: how many sopranos does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three; one to screw it in, one to put the ladder out from under her, and a third to murmur through a very tight smile, "well reallydarling, it was to high for her."

Meier is many years into this one and the top is absolutely surgical. Act II was sung with great poise and real commitment. I feel like she goes around singing Kundry at any opera house, high school, or nursing home that's putting on Parsifal, but she hasn't routinized it or put it on autopilot in any perceptible way. "Ich sah das Kind" was produced with the sort of musicality that makes it sound like far more accessible music than it is, like Puccini or something. It was almost enough to make me forget what mystical crap the libretto is, and that takes some doing.

I can't get too enthusiastic or on the other hand too bitter about the conducting. I'd say it lacked some of the grandeur and pacing of the Lohengrin run, but I'd say it softly and hope nobody much heard, and then wait for someone who's more keenly tuned in to conducting to give you the real skinny.

It's getting really hard to say anything about Rene Pape that doesn't sound somehow like saying, "Puppies are really cute. No, I mean seriously cute. Hot damn are they cute." Unless you're trying to be the most controversial kid in the fourth grade, you're just kind of stuck being part of the amen chorus, because at least in Wagner, there's never going to be anything negative or even lukewarm to say about him. I will simply venture to comment that Gurnemanz is all the more an accomplishment for being an absolutely endless sing. For god's sake, he doesn't even have the good sense to know that singers with such beautiful voices are usually boring.

I didn't end up having much of an opinion on Tommy Hairdo, nor even much snarky to say. There remains an element of late period Jessye Norman to the delivery, something pedantic, but it's not overwhelming, and while I don't think the voice has a real Wagnerian steel in it, it was very pretty and always where it needed to be.

Next up, I brave the Millo Tosca (with the Wellsungs--safety in numbers) waiting either to be reborn as a Millatic or say truly rotten things after.

Just for the hell of it, a second look

Well I mean I was hardly going to miss Vogt's Lohengrin after the things people were saying online, right? And so I did not.

A short report, then. First of all Mattila just keeps getting better as Elsa. I've never been a hardcore Mattilist, often find there's a disconnect between the frenetic physical acting style and the voice, which has a smallish palette if you ask me. So either I haven't been giving her enough credit, or Esla is just a role that calls for exactly what she's got to give. She makes the Robert Wilson thing look like an obvious choice (though I'm going to have to paste in an image later that may ruin the production for you) and is so vocally ping-y the tiny casting agent in the mind makes little paper dolls of her and puts on Isolde costumes and such, just for fun, when no-one's looking. DeVol continues to work out in the role despite a certain vocal curdle that just isn't going anywhere. She had a few slips on high notes, forgivable at the end of the evening at the end of the run, and also really nothing compared to the unfortunately well documented Heppner mishaps. Her closing night clearance sale vamping was a special treat. Did that sound sarcastic? Because it so wasn't.

Pape is another singer I hadn't fully signed on with until last night. His turn in last season's unexpectedly mediocre Faust was solid but to my ear rather joyless. You can have all the technique in the books in that role, but if you lack a certain swagger, you are toast. French toast. Maybe with carmelized bananas, like they make at Marseilles in Hell's Kitchen. Note to Maury: don't blog when hungry, or everything turns to brunch. So anyway as the King, Pape is a mile high stack of raspberry pancakes with tons of butter. Listen, just be glad I didn't go in for a bagel metaphor or we might have ended up with a Pape schmear. Thanks, I'll be here all week.

So who's that leave? Right, Klaus Florian Vogt. Do you pronounce the g at all? Does it like totally vanish or is it more of a guttural thing, pronounced like the ghghghghghg in "Heighghghghghgl dir, Elsa!"? It took me most of the evening to figure out what I thought about Herr Vogt, because the sounds was so thoroughly disorienting. The color doesn't go with the size, it''s like Anton Dermota was suddenly singing Otello. Really, truly, it sounds amplified. There are negatives, in particular a marked lack of legato, but the big picture is exciting, for sure. It's just confoundingly difficult to think exactly what rep he's cut out for. I'm a champ at dream casting and haven't a clue. When the first adjective that springs to mind to describe your Wagner tenor is "limpid", you know you're off the grid. For Lohengrin it makes for a rather spectacular success, though. It throws off the aesthetic balance of things if Lohengrin sounds prettier than Elsa, but in an interesting way. I have heard clips of Gedda and Pertile singing the big aria, but this was even more pronounced. Ok, you know what? I haven't figured out what I think of Vogt after all. Judging by his reception, though, I should have ample opportunity to do so.

It bears mention that the swan was out of order in Act I but Mr. Vogt made no reference to Leo Slezak. The nice thing about a Robert Wilson production is if you hadn't seen it before you'd probably just assume it was part of the whole abstract minimalism extravaganza. They called in a swan mechanic before the third act, thereby avoiding the crisis of a little boy covered in white paint having to cool his heels in his little Gap Kids loincloth upstage for half an hour before it was time for Lohengrin to pull him out of a hat.

Tune in next week for reviews of Thomas Hampson's hair in Parsifal. Tune in to Wellsung, where I'm expecting some opinions on Vogt any moment.

A little note about a favorite voice

If you've been reading for a while, you probably know by my incessant harping that Susanne Mentzer is one of a few singers I consider truly out of the ordinary, and artist and not just a pretty voice. I notice on Chicago Opera Theater's site that she is joining the faculty at Rice after years at DePaul. Lyric, it seems to me, never made much use of her. I wonder if she will now be gracing the stage of Houston Grand Opera, in many ways my home company, the first place I saw a real operatic star turn (Bartoli's US opera debut as Rosina) and the first place I heard Mentzer, as Octavian in 1993. Lucky Houston, if so.

Possente amor

Far be it from me to fan the flames of opera faggotry*, but y'all are gonna wet your pants over this one. I mean, everyone's already kind of having kittens about Stephen Costello, but I think I just joined up, myself. Check the link. Mr. Costello, who really is infuriatingly good looking on top of the rest of the sundae, sings the big Rigoletto scena 'til it begs for mercy. For my money, the performance lacks only Villazon's nervous energy. Meanwhile, someone with a score or a pitchpipe tell me what the high note is, k? My guitar thought it was an e flat, but my guitar has not been tuned to an external source in quite a while. And I mean, it couldn't be an e-flat, because that just wouldn't be fair.

[Almost forgot to tip the hat to Nick von Trrill who put me onto it.]

*The lies we tell, really.

You were expecting, maybe, a Rodelinda review? Aw, heck, I just cannot get up the steam to go see it. I think I've already spilled a few words too many about Fleming la belle and Fleming la bete, but without further dissertation, Fleming in Handel makes my teeth hurt. I'm absolutely thrilled, on the other hand, that she's singing Tacea la Notte at the Volpedammerung. If she goes that direction in the next few years, I'm quite prepared to become her cheerleader once again, pom-poms and all. Gimme an R!

Crisatunity

The thing that frustrates me is that a year from now, he'll sing something without any croaking, and people will say (as they did last time this happened, and the time before), "Heppner really seems to have come through his vocal crisis. I guess his technique is all patched up now." And the Rhein will overflow its banks, and we'll be righ back where we started, with apologies to Anna Russell. Evidence of what I'm talking about over at Parterre. And, yes, he sounded much better than this the night I went, but a musicologist friend informs me that very very strange musicology eminance Carolyn Abbate is actually writing these days about the effect Ben Heppner's cracks have on our listening experience. Speaking only for me and anyone who will sign my petition, I'd describe these effects as: wishing (hopefully without becoming one of those people) that someone would turn up another Melchior, or Vickers, or even Windgassen. Jeez, I don't hate his singing or anything, and he seems really nice, but it's getting to be like certain wines: odd years are fine; even years, let's just go see some nice Mozart.

Edit: Ok, this sounds unreasonable to me, re-reading. Heppner is a good singer. I guess I just wish we could stop referring to something so clockwork-regular as a crisis. Let's review: Heppner is a good singer. Heppner has a pretty, large, lyric voice. Heppner is going to fuck up in certain roles that require more than that, and if I don't feel like bracing myself for a lot of phlegmy sounds, I can always just skip those when he sings them, except I probably won't because there's no stellar alternative right now and I don't want to forego these operas altogether. The announced Siegfried in Aix sounds like a big mistake, but fortunately for everyone involved, I have a fear of flying matched only in intensity by my lack of funds for opera-going jaunts in Europe, so I will not be there, smacking my head, saying: it's not a vocal crisis, and he's not going to fix it. If this were the McLaughlin Group, and McLaughlin had just asked for everyone's predictions, I'd say: Heppner will sing Siegfried in Aix and then drop the role. And then I'd propose (platonic) marriage to Eleanor Clift for being so excellent. Anyway I'm probably wrong. I am not infrequently, it may be noted, wrong.

With hiatuses like this, who needs...what's the opposite of a hiatus?

I've always believed if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing in a half-assed, ambivalent manner, and that seems to include my hiatus. I mean, here I am not a day later passing along to you the amusing news, sent by a loyal reader who is hopefully to be blogging (again) soon himself, that according to this link, Met stars Patricia Racette, Dolora Zajick, and Ruth Ann Swenson are all going to be singing the national anthem at baseball games out in SF. My correspondent thinks Zajick is the funniest idea, but for some reason it's Racette that tickles me most. I don't know whether it's a cheap "did you mean to say softball?" joke that's stuck in my head or just that last time I saw her she was stalking Nathan Gunn and then drowning.

Meanwhile, in National Anthem news, cross posted under "unbelievable hipocrisy," the man who got himself "elected" (in heavy scare quotes) to some large extent by going around speaking worse Spanish than I do with two semesters under my belt, now voices his objections to the new, admittedly horribly cheezily arranged, Spanish language version of selfsame song, called in this guise Nuestro Himno.

Addio senza addio...

"Lloyd always said that in the theater, a lifetime was a season, and a season a lifetime."
--Karen Richards in All About Eve

Well, no. I'm not pulling the plug on Maury D'Annato exactly. At least probably not. I am, however, scheduling a heart to heart with him after Parsifal, presumably the last big operatic event I'm hitting this season. It's just that valedictory postings are such fun, I didn't want to get cheated out of one just because I'm not necessarily leaving.

And the facts are these: I started this blog six months ago thinking two or three friends might read it if they were exceptionally bored at work. And a certain number beyond that have begun reading it, and that's a bit of a thrill. But my writing on this topic has begun to feel a little formulaic to me, and maybe to you as well. The reason to keep blogging would be if I thought I were writing something usefully or at least enjoyably unique/new, and I have mixed feelings about that. Occasionally I write a sentence that makes me laugh, but often it looks a lot like another sentence I wrote three weeks ago. Nu...

The summer may be something of a natural break, though already I'm booking up Caramoor and the like. Who can say? If you find me posting a time or two a week, a year from now, you can retrospectively consider this little more than an excuse to quote a beloved farewell by a real writer to his fictitious creation: [yeah, yeah, I'm gonna translate, but I'm just so excited to have found the text online]

Блажен, кто праздник жизни рано
Оставил, не допив до дна
Бокала полного вина,
Кто не дочёл её романа
И вдруг умел расстаться с ним,
Как я с Онегиным моим.

loosely:

Blissful is he who left the party early,
Left the last of the wine undrunk,
Who didn't read the last page of the novel
But was able simply to part with it
As I do now with my Onegin.

And I my Maury, except probably not really. Gosh, I think I got something in my eye.

Hoch soll er leben

In about 20 minutes you should sing "Happy Birthday" to Jonathan von Wellsung. Sing really loud, so he can hear you.

p.s. he likes German opera and Janacek if you're feeling gifty. I'm just sayin'. (Just address it by name. The post office will know. Kinda like Santa.)

Bel rispetto

You know, before I even get going, I'm wondering if I can make it through this review without using the word italianita. I bet you I can't. If I do, you owe me a dollar. If I don't, you can have Franco Farina. Aw, hell, why don't you go ahead and take the little fella and, just, do me a favor--don't let him out for a couple of weeks.

I think I said I was blogging Parsifal next. As a matter of fact, I went to the Tosca prima on an absolute last minute whim, third row standing downstairs. I was having thoughts of going to the Voigt/Villa Tosca, second to last in the run, because I had some non-specific memory of a Farina fiasco that kept nagging at me. Aida maybe? I mean, you've been reading me, perhaps, and know I'm actually not that quick to slag on a singer. And though I was star-struck by the Met itself and New York the first time I took in an opera there, I seem to recall he was a pretty good Lenski somewhere in the vicinity of eighty years ago, in my youth.

But I didn't wait for Villa's turn in the role, and must report that what sounds to have been, in better days, a big, pretty voice, with the added attraction that he's not shy about hanging on to a high note, is now severely worn and sports a vibrato as big as all outdoors. It is impossible to speak about his pitch; one must write instead about his pitches. As the New York Times, in one of their better hatchet jobs, once said of Tori Spelling, "[His] every entrance is cause for regret." The opera houses of the world seem to disagree with me...he gets a lot of work. But really, the thought of his Pollione is not a nice one. Happily enough, the New York public agrees with the opera houses of the world, and gave him a nice ovation. I'd rather someone like his singing so I don't have to try.

Voigt had kind of a strange evening. All but three and a half minutes of her singing made a fine case for her as a singer who, by virtue of general vocal splendor and a newly vigorous stage presence was going to overcome a fundamental lack of...oh wait, I wasn't going to use that word...wasn't going to let her much stronger affinity for a Teutonic line keep her from a truly appealing Tosca. It's a minor shame, not for her, but for me, that she's not instead a temperamentally Germanic bass singing Scarpia, or I could have ended that sentence with something about wresting success from the jaws of Fafner. Ok, no, not such a shame after all. (Sometimes you have to type these things before you know.) Her chest voice is resoundingly present and the middle has the right oomph for Tosca.

The rotten part is that those three and a half minutes were, as you may have guessed, "Vissi d'arte." There's no explanation for the total inconsistency that makes sense to me except she started with a dry throat, or swallowed a bug or something. She rushed past the conductor from the first phrase, and then had drastic support problems that made of the last note something quite desperate. It was like watching a good friend fall down stairs, I'm afraid. (Though let's keep everything in perspective...a short flight of stairs, and in the past one's friend had achieved deserved renown in climbing the world's staircases.) I hope hope hope it was a one-off. I guess the other possibility is some of these roles really just aren't for her, and there's still a lot of jugendlich dramatisch stuff she's peerless in. But then what explains the solidity of her recent Leonoras? Anyway, as it is now traditional and right to add, she looked really nice, and though it's hard to say a lot about theatrical subleties from standing spot 89, the murder of Scarpia came off well, and her header onto the sidewalk looked like a real jump. (The river, it has been pointed out to me, is far enough away she'd need a jet pack, and then the opera would end quite differently.) It is also, I might add, rather a thrill to hear one's name shouted from the stage by Ms. Voigt.

You know, if one were to indulge in a revisionist Tosca of the sort that makes everyone get all misty for the days when opera didn't ask any questions, wouldn't it be funny to let the air out of everyone's deeply cathected curiosity and have her jump off a transparent parapet so we could see: where does she land? Is there a mattress? A trampoline? How far does she have to fall? Sorry, these things pop into my head unbidden when I'm hearing Franco Farina sing "E lucevan le stelle." Think of it as a defense mechanism.

I know a lot of people love James Morris. I never have. Still I'm pretty sure I'm being fair in saying it's time for him to enjoy his place in opera history from somewhere other than the stage. It's just too hard to get properly creeped out by a Scarpia when he's such a compromise in one of opera's great entrances, and follows up accordingly. We size up the mettle of opera heros and villains a fair piece on the vocal strength of their proponents, don't we? Voigt could just too clearly kick his ass. It just doesn't work.

One line shout out to the muscular voice of Kyle Ketelsen, an up-and-comer spotted here as Angelotti.

So just for the hell of it, and just to show I'm open-minded, I'm now toying with dusting off my tinfoil hat (to fit in) and taking in the Millo outing, especially if I can get the Wellsungs in on the act. In part, I've had to question how much of my indifference to Millo is in response to her minions after some riveting excerpts posted elsewhere on the occasion her birthday. In part I'm curious to see this whole routine where she crawls around in circles licking the floor or whatever it is she does after she whacks Scarpia. So look for me there, I guess--if I'm really managing to pass, I'll be the one with the glassy eyes and a perm, muttering to himself.

p.s. I think I'll experimentally turn off comment moderation (because it's a pain in the ass) with a polite request to the person known as Marschallin not to post here. I'm sure you're lovely, but your internet persona seems to be that of shit-stirrer and I'm just going to delete your comments.

In all things

I've just turned on comment moderation, so your comments won't appear right away.

A unique concert experience

A strange, funny, somewhat alarming moment at a concert I'm not going to blog in any depth because it's just not my fach. NYPO, Rostropovich, Vengerov: Shostakovich violin concerto & Symphony 10.

They play the first moevement of the concerto. It ends, everyone coughs and coughs. They open the doors to let in the stragglers, who straggle extensively. Really it was several minutes, and then at the end of several minutes, with Vengerov and Rostropovich just standing up there being musical eminences [quibble if you will; Rostropovich certainly is one and Vengerov, I mean, he's younger than me dammit but he's just so in charge on that there fiddle...] these two tackily dressed, helmet-haired matrons are still standing in the aisle. Just standing. I think perhaps someone was in their seats but for god's sake, just sit somewhere, I mean...!

And then the audience, en masse, HISSED at them. But I'm not kidding. And an usher went down and straightened the whole thing out, and Rostropovich and Vengerov did I think have some subtle outrage in their body language, and when the biddies found their seats, everyone APPLAUDED. I've seen localized hostility at the bearer of an errant cell phone, but this was kind of wild.

Anyway so all I'll say about the concert is it was mightily impressive to hear MV take that utterly cold and jagged cadenza and play it with legato. Remember in the early 90's when it seemed like they were turning out a bunch of violinists with technique to burn but no real edge or soul? It seems like that was all bad dream, sometimes, when you happen to hear the likes of Vengerov, or Mutter, or Shaham, who have it all. I wonder if the cadenza of the heart-stopping final allegro contained just a little venom reserved for a certain pair of latecomers...

Is it plagiarism if you're stealing your own lines?

To be filed under...I'm not sure what. Someone with a long memory and an even longer cache of saved emails* has sent me my reaction to Lohengrin in 1998. Rude awakening #1 is that I was all Mr. Literal-pants and didn't cotton to the production. Rude awakening #2 is that I'm stealing my own jokes, seven and a half years later, pretty much word for word.

For the hell of it, here goes:

Thus runs the timeline of movement-as-art in the twentieth century:

1913 - Nijinsky's Sacre du Printemps raises Parisian eyebrows
1984 - Synchronized swimming becomes an Olympic event
1997 - Robert Wilson's Lohengrin booed at the Metropolitan

Granted, I probably left a few things out. Also granted: the temporalpossibility of WIlson taking in the summer games proves nothing interms of causality or inspiration. The trend, nonetheless, is downward. It seems a shame, in any case, the R.W. didn't turn his talent for devastating tableaux to ballet or something else not explicitly textual, as the frequent contertextuality of his directing is by turns frustrating and hilarious, in opera.

Some examples: Ortrud and Elsa's Act II confrontation. Unavoidably,gripping drama. Unless they sort of skate around one another, Ortrudmaking a Vulcan salute, while Elsa answers "Live long and prosper"with what can only mean in a late 90s gestural lexicon: "Talk to thehand, cuz Elsa ain't listenin'!" Later Telramund perishes in opera's first death by voguing -- no sword, just attitude! But the best/worst may have been Lohengrin, singing to Elsa to give Gottfriedhis horn, ring, and sword, and proceeding to hand her what appears tobe either a Hallmark card or a paper airplane. Is the moral of this opera that it's the thought that counts?

Anyhow... it had its moments, and the singing (Ben Heppner, Karita Mattila, Deborah Polaski, René Pape) was uniformly solid. Everyone hadexciting moments, even. Levine got a screaming ovation from thethird-act survivors, (Thank god no-one loves Wagner; I heard the lastact from orchestra seats) though I've heard the Met orchestra soundbetter -- it's basically gradations of perfection.

And we're back to the present, for better or worse.

*ok wow. Correction. This was apparently an actual letter on that material they used to make from trees.

In other news, you know what would be lots of fun? A Robert Wilson Fledermaus, that's what.

Wann geht die nachste disembodied ving on veels?

First thing I must do is see a psychoanalyst for a few years and see if he can't cure me of the infernal urge to turn to withered old ladies in the august elevators of the Metropolitan and murmur, "Pardon me, madam, but...aren't you Frida Leider?" It's worst at Wagner operas.

I first caught the Met's Robert Wilson Lohengrin in its second season, when Mattila had already stepped in for Voigt and I think perhaps Pape had just joined the party. Robert Wilson, by the way, is from Waco, Texas. I don't know if you knew. I just find it sheds and interesting (bluish) light on things. Anyway the shock had at least to some extent worn off in '98 after what is reported to have been a scandalous opening, at least among les bourgeois epates, with the booing and the out-walking. At this point everyone had decided it was really awfully pretty, which it is. And now, I mean...I'll tell you a secret, which is that if you've never seen another Lohengrin production, it's actually rather difficult to imagine how some of the time is filled (for instance what the hell is Elsa doing as the herald asks her lengthily to answer for herself--combing her hair?) if not with crazy underwater vamping around.

Aright, Blogger has crashed my browser twice now, so here's a very skinny skinny and if I pull myself and my computer together later, I'll edit. [Which I did, but may do again. People are writing thoughtful and provocative things about this performance and here's Maury, cracking jokes.]

Mattila I've never heard in such good form. I realize it makes me a huge hypocrite to complain about her fidgety nature onstage after praising Netrebko's Norina so highly a few weeks ago, but I like the way RW's straightjacketed choreography stills her, and I'm very pleased about the way Elsa fits her vocally. Very very pleased. I can be a bit of an agnostic regarding her deity status, but I can find no fault with her here. Can we play gay slumber party games now and cast her in things we'd like to hear? Tentatively I'm going to run Ariadne up the flagpole and see who salutes. It's a role in which I've never been fully satisfied with any active singer. (I started to say "living singer" but decided to put aside my suspicions that Schwarzkopf is doing a Weekend at Bernie's thing. I always thought Boris Yeltsin was, and then he went and actually died, disproving my theory.) Anyway if you don't believe me, pull up a chair chez Jonathan von Wellsung and JSU. Oh and now Steve Smith of Night after Night. I am, as ever, cheered greatly by a warm audience response, and hers was a stomping ovation.

And at long last I have the sensation after last night of finally having heard Ben Heppner when he's not having an off night. There were a couple of cracks on notes right in the middle of his voice, sung mezzo forte, that were kind of inexplicable in the context of an unflinching march through the opera's estimable terrors of tessitura and volume. I suspect I'm never really going to warm to the color of the voice or awaken to unnoticed psychological detail in the singing, but there's no denying he was in fine form.

Now, Luana DeVol is a good kind of singer to have around these days, but of her kind she isn't quite what I'd hoped. She's actually quite expert at Robert Wilsoning around the stage and wringing grandure out of cruelly proscribed gesture, however that's done. She's also got the kind of loud, ugly voice I for one can't get enough of. It just isn't well put together, or perhaps has worn badly over the years--it's been pointed out elsewhere that though this is her Metropolitan debut, she's had a career already elsewhere. Lest one is tempted to make jokes of the form "The weebles called...", a moment must be taken to peruse the mental list of alternative Ortruden. DeVol is kind of fine for now, given what we have. It is not lost on me, by the way, that unless you were four years old pretty much exactly when I was, my weeble joke is going to look like gibberish. I'm filing Ms. DeVol under: not disappointing/not thrilling, to be reviewed at a later date.

The dude whose name I am blanking on who stepped in for an ailing Other Forgotten Name Dude as Telramund had a bit of an impasse with Mr. Wagner in the first act, but it was brief, and otherwise he sang with distinction. (Edit: the cover was for Pape as the King.)

I think for once I am totally, but for real, going to bow out on orchestral commentary, since others seem to have been paying more attention or perhaps gotten more sleep before writing their reviews.

Funniest part of production: (No, I don't think it's bad, but there are moments that teeter between awe inspiring and guffaw-inspiring. Sometimes those are my very favorite details.) when Lohengrin and Telramund have a voguing competition and Lohengrin throws more attitude, thereby voguing Telramund to death.

Next up, I think: Parsifal.

Who gets eaten, and who gets to eat

I think it's probably really good to be Patti LuPone. I just get that impression.

I'm a little out of my depth discussing the current revival of Sweeney Todd (which seems, by the way, to have inspired a movement, or the beginning of one: the upcoming revival of Company is also done in the DIY, company=orchestra format.) I know opera people are obsessive about their rep, but seriously, queens that know their Sondheim know their Sondheim. And though I like him lots, I'm pretty much limited to having seen a live production or two and worn the Len Cariou version of A Little Night Music down to a scratched plastic coaster. So this is I suppose today's caveat lector: your mileage may vary, as the young folk say.

I did in fact see Lyric Opera of Chicago's big, confused musical-qua-opera staging of Sweeney a few years ago, so I've got that to compare to, but they're so different it's almost laughable to compare them. Terfel sang the role in a way Michael Cerveris simply can't, and on the other hand played it rather generically...I've never really been able to hop on board the Terfelwagon, and unlike so many, I dread the idea of his Wotan. It's quite a voice, but I've never been able to warm up to his "best kid in the drama club" characterizations. Also in Chicago, Judith Christin did a creditable job of what I have it on good word from a more versed Sondheimer every Mrs. Lovett until LuPone has done: a really passable stab at being Angela Lansbury, the UrLovett. There are many worse people to be, and it's not really anyone's fault that her portrayal is an immortal moment in theater. It takes guts to try something totally different and (in addition, I suspect, to smart direction) guts are a strong suit chez LuPone. And she looks fantastic, by the way.

The production itself is radically spare and at the same time looks like an ingenious act of trickery. The cost, I think, of wrenching Sweeney out of the rut that is the heritage of a fanatically beloved first production, is a certain lack of fun here. Nuh huh, I know it's about murder and stuff, but Lansbury and Cariou don't gild the tuberose: they are sinister and Mephistophelean, but in the way of 19th century Mephistopheleses(eseses), evil with a glint in its eye. That glint is dead in the current staging. Which sounds like a diss, but it's not. Going to this Sweeney is, opera-wise, more like going to Elektra than Don Giovanni, if that metaphor does anyone any good. It's about people doing bad things because they're human wreckage.

Cerveris plays Sweeney as a walking corpse, and as for LuPone...I think there's something quite complex about her portrayal really. It's dire, but it's also a little bit Lotte Lenya, a little bit Marjorie Main. (I realize that's a bit far out, but listen to a couple of the no-bull line readings...maybe I'm wrong.) By the same token that her character's fit with that of Cerveris takes away some of the fun in numbers like "A Little Priest" where a darkly funny, game sense of collaboration between the two is replaced by a bloody deal well made and sealed, and perhaps also takes away a bit of the pathos--Lupone singing "By the sea" is just creepy--I think there's an urgency, a macabre radiance here that the original pairing didn't so much have.

Certain gestures in the staging (the pouring of buckets of blood, Mr. Todd walking around with the coffin lid on his shoulder) wear out their welcome a little, but on the whole the economy of the thing is almost shocking. The singing other than that of LuPone is all around B+ material. As Alex has noted, the arrangements, while not sumptuous, do a very neat trompe-l'oreille thing and let you forget quite often that there's a kind of compromise going on.

Lots of empty seats in balcony, so I'm thinking if you want to catch this, you should consider stepping on it.

Periodic Not Opera Posting

Under the flimsy rubric of "Hey, this is a culture blog," I must pause from not reviewing all the opera I'm not seeing these few weeks to urge you out of your houses, should you happen to live in a major coastal city with art houses that premiere relatively small indie flix, to go see Brick. It's...well, it's a high school film noir. In a formulation I think we've all grown to hate, I suppose you could say it's Heathers meets The Big Sleep, only no, something better than The Big Sleep...maybe Double Indemnity. The film takes up this ridiculous task of genre-fuck and does not blink. Some performances are more assured than others, but all within the range of making it work. A special Maury Thinks you're Swell and maybe kind of wants to Do You award* goes to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a sitcom star made very good, in fact seemingly destined for indie royalty status. [Edit: story about JGL being offered the role in Dazed and Confused deleted when MD realizes he has things backward ad probably it's that Wiley Wiggins was offered/turned down Third Rock. It's a funhouse of mistakes, folks!]

I couldn't ruin the plot for you if I wanted to, because really they did take a page from The Big Sleep, in terms of almost un-navigable complexity. But it occasions all manner of sly talk, occasionally also oblique to the point of incomprehension, but quite nearly musical in composition. And interspersed with hilarious trivialities of teenage life. Gordon-Levitt, most of all, manages to put over the poetry of an idiom that died out decades before his birth. The whole thing reminded me a little of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, so comparably, thoroughly vanished is the language used. In both films, some of the young actors sound a little like they're reading lines phonetically, but in Brick the majority seem to have done their homework, to have gotten the rhythm of things worked sufficiently into muscle memory that they can deliver with spontaneity and embellish with nuance. Meagan Good and Noah Segan, playing stock types (the drama club vixen and the stoner who talks a good game) shine particularly in this.

And it's all put together with considerable visual flair and the kind of indelible sense of place that the great noir films had. Highly recommended. Go see it if you can.

*Oh, put down the phone. He's 25.

This Just In

Updates substantial and insubstantial from the opera blogosphere:

Parterre is the new Opera-L, by the look of it. Entries are logging up to 60 responses--holy cow! And, like Opera-L postings, some of them are long and informative, some are wildly irrelevant but interesting, and some merely meshuggeneh. We're wondering what La Cieca thought of Don P, but suspect her silence indicates that editor JJ is dishing it up at Gay City News.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...I don't think I'm going to anything for a while, probably 'til Lohengrin. If I blog at all, I suppose it's going to have to be gabbing about recordings, which I sometimes suspect is not that gripping. I did, after literally years of eyeing it at academy, finally plunk down for the 1962 Bohm Iphegenie with the amazing lineup of Borkh, Ludwig, and Berry. So far I'd say it's good blood&guts non PEP (oh wait, I mean HIP. PEP is post-exposure prophylaxis) Gluck, something to make the John Elliot Gardeners of the world go back to...gardening, I guess. Ewa Podles, in one interview, referred to early music conductors hilariously but not quite sensically as "pharmacists." Back to Rite-Aid with the lot of ye! I mean, yeah, you have your Minkowskis and your Jean(ne) Lamons [side note: there are definitely references to this musician as both Jean and Jeanne. Is this a transgender thing or just a de-Gallicization?] but there are also plenty of hangovers from the bloodless aesthetic of the 90's and who wants to sit through a Medea where nobody's allowed to emote?

With a silent 21 gun salute, I have taken the Chicago Canadienne out of the sidebar, as she has moved on from the 'sphere. And ACB of the concert is on a long-sounding hiatus--what's up with the mad attrition? Are we all burning out from the peculiar experience of having strangers look into our heads?

If it's really such a Namelose Freude, could you maybe shut the hell up about it?

And for the record I have no real opinion on Sunnegardh because I can't tolerate Fideedly-doodlio and was mostly not listening. I mean, is there any uglier writing for the human voice than the two big arias in this opera?

Happy Ending

E.V.E.N.T.

Some nights are; some nights aren't. Last night was, and there's no way around it.

The strangest piece of commentary I have to offer on the Met's new Don Pasquale, unveiled to roaring approval last night, goes something like this: Anna Netrebko is now, in the way of Margo Channing, a Star. She will never again be anything else. Her natural charm and comic flair on the boards of the Metropolitan were so great, so conquered was I by them, that I will go see pretty much anything else she's in. Not since Bartoli's staged opera debut in Houston in what I'm remembering as 1993 have I seen such natural comedy and joie de chanter. Her voice fills Sybil's Barn with gratifying ease. And I still don't like her singing.

What's an opera queen to do? I'm happy enough to live with contradictions. I really do want to go see her in almost anything (I keep qualifying because she's on for Romeo et Juliette next season and I really don't think I'm up for that particular trudge again.) I was a little in love with her by final curtain. But the voice itself remains, to my ear, ugly, and its production still a little unsubtle. I can't think of another singer I've felt this way about: I can imagine attending her career for the next may-it-be-many years and never wanting a recorded souvenir. I'm sure I'm in the minority and I don't begrudge anyone their more total enjoyment of her. My heart lept up at her mid-act applause after "So anch'io la virtu magica" and stayed with her the whole evening.

It's not even a matter just of being funny, though it's a pleasure to hear a full house laugh rather than giggling on cue [oh, there's the punchline. must produce laughter.] I think what it is above all else is the privilege of watching someone capable of producing deeply convincing spontaneity onstage. Or watching someone who acts with apparent affection for/generosity toward her colleagues. Or watching someone who can act with her feet. Or even just someone who wears clothes that fucking well. Anna Netrebko could bring out the vicarious drag queen in anyone.

I mentioned her chemistry with her colleagues, and it is only moral to mention that each and every one of them responded with what surely was his own estimable best. If I've seen a production where the average level of performance was so high, I can't think of it. My warmest approval goes to Barry Banks. If you haven't read another write-up already, you're thinking: Maury is hitting the bottle again. Barry Banks was not scheduled even up to the last minute. In fact, up to the last scene. Before his services were required, Juan Diego Florez gave a performance of such vocal radiance I had to stuff tiny metaphorical sunglasses in my goddamn ears. I don't know Don Pasquale particularly well, but I kept hoping for the scene where Ernesto and Norina would interact more, because the thought of that pooled wonderfulness was intoxicating. It didn't really happen.

Several people left as soon as the words "Juan Diego Florez has had an allergic reaction" were out of Joe Volpe's mouth. Imbeciles. I was in a good mood anyway from the rest of the opera, plus I had a positive association with the name Barry Banks from somewhere (was he on that jaw-dropping clip from Ermione La Cieca posted a while back? With Pendatchanska @ NYCO?) and had a hunch this might not be a bad thing. Well, I'm not just patting the underdog on the back here. Ernesto's last act aria and the duet with Norina that follows were a triumph of vocal security and loveliness by the brilliant Barry Banks. He sings with an ounce less sweetness than Florez, but a marvellous plangency and, at risk of leaping head first into judgement after a short sing, artistry of the first order. I really may go stand for his one-off later in the month. Bear in mind a week or so ago the best I could come up with to say about Don Pasquale was "it's shite!"

I guess I don't have as much to say about Simone Alaimo and Marius Kwiecien or else I'm afraid of sounding like I was on ecstasy last night and am just a fount of indiscriminate praise. Alaimo was quite funny and idiomatically very connected to this music, perhaps a little moreso than Kwiecien who nonetheless was extraordinarily appealing. At the end of their duet, they stood, back to back, at the edge of the stage, pumping out rapid-fire Italian patter. It was just wonderful is all. I'm sorry to be such a sap.

The production itself was a realist Otto Schenk affair, heaps sunnier and better than the other Schenk productions at the Met. I don't feel I ave anything particularly enligthening to say about it, so I won't.

Ridiculous as it is, I'm going to mark my last comment with a spoiler alert, because the thing I want to describe, the thing that sealed the deal on Netrebko for me, looked so spontaneous I hate to ruin it for you if you go, even though we all know it wasn't an act of invention by Trebs. So stop reading if you want to be delighted by it without forewarning. This was I guess right at the end of the opera, and it was just a little trick of staging: what she did was she came all the way forward, almost to the very edge, and then crouched on the prompter's box to sing the end of the scene. Sounds inconsequential. Go see it and tell me if you agree.

Oh and p.s. April Fool's, they all sucked.
And p.p.s. no of course they didn't; could I fake that kind of enthusiasm? Answer: I could not.

Edit, added later: I've only read a couple of reviews by others in the blogosphere/opera-l-osphere and it appears I may be alone, or in any case alone plus the thousands of people screaming their fool heads off last night. Strange feeling.

Looking back, just for kicks

Addendum, last year's favorites, excerpted/edited with kind permission from Trrill :

"To my tastes, though, only two sang in a way that said 'get out of my way and hand over the mantel of greatness.' That one of these was 21-year-old Lisette Oropesa only goes to show sometimes you just got it, and time will only (we hope) make what is good better. This young chicky could sing us some fine vulnerable Mozart ladies or maybe a Lakmé or two at the Met or anywhere else, providing vocal loveliness and frightening accuracy for those who lap it up and fodder for the kind of people who love nothing more than to say 'her voice isn't big enough for the Met' to grumble at each other all the way home to put on their records of Zinka and cry. Just between you, me, and the ten-foot-tall autographed poster of Ghena Dimitrova on the wall here at the Palazzo D'annato, your friend Maury loves the thrill of a big voice as much as anyone, but some flavors don't come in extra large, and this is one. It's audible, it's beautiful, and nobody's asking her to sing Ortrud. For the record, her pieces here were 'Ruhe sanft' and 'Una voce poco fa.' The former was so appropriately, unobtrusively pretty that nobody got all that rowdy about it. The latter was actually funny, which is something of a feat, and the fiorature were beyond reproach, her pitch better than anyone else in the competition."

Ms. Oropesa's Lindemann Recital debut will be Tuesday, April 4.

"The other standout, it seems to us, was self-described-in-bio 'character tenor' Rodell Aure Rosel, who is more or less guaranteed a career. The Hoffmann aria, arteesteecally speaking, teetered on the brink of pandering, but the voce was all there, so really it seems ignoble to complain. The "Song of the Worm" (from Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles) gets points just for chutzpah in programming and yet more points for having the goods to back it up. This lad (and let me shed a tear here, moved as I am always by the success of fellow Children-of-a-Lesser-Height) knows what his career is going to be about and knows exactly how it's done. Never thought we'd utter this one but: move over, Gerhard Stolze!"

Ghosts of Versailles is on for 2010 or whenever...Peter Gelb, meet Rodell.

...it looks like there were actually three I liked a lot, though, as I wrote:

"Also ridiculously young, bass Jordan Bisch pulled fast one by singing an aria from Aleko, an opera nobody has ever heard. Ever. The lowest notes ring true, he's bothered to learn good Russian diction (wise move for a bass, eh?) and the climactic note of the piece was held so long the poor fellow was gasping for breath, as were some in the audience. We approve of a singer who isn't afraid to look a little beat up after a good workout. At least it's not the bored look they seem to be teaching in conservatories everywhere."

...and that wraps up the "quoting myself because I'm just that self-absorbed" edition of MFI. Next up: Don Pasquale. Yeah, I know what I said.

Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals Concert

Writing up the Met Council is a rather different assignment, I think, than opera reviewing. Assignment, he says, as if he were Roz Russell and Cary Grant had just said, "Hildy, that Metropolitan Opera has story written all over it!" Anyway I certainly don't go in with my poison pen in hand; everyone that's made it to this stage is an accomplished singer in one way or another, though some will be more succesful than others, and that's the way things go. I find it poignant that this may be what some remember as their moment in the spotlight, and I don't find myself in the world's most critical mood. I will say that this year's slate of singers were more about potential for me than present excitement, compared with last year's singers some of whom seemed a bit more...finished. It occurs to me I wrote about them folks under an entirely different operanym and maybe will try and wrest that text from Nikk over at Trill and print it here.

The concert is really about showing up with friends, comparing notes on who you think should win, affecting some air of shock if they don't, and enjoying the casual air of the event. I guess if I went and thought someone was truly awful, I'd just not mention their particular performance*, and nobody was awful or even bad, so can I please stop hedging now and write about the damned thing?

1. Nikki Einfeld of Canada
Selection I preferred and what I thought about it: The Willow Song from Baby Doe. Warm and distinctive tone, natural stage presence without movements born of nervous agitation.
What I'd like to hear her in: probably Mozart. Maybe more 20th century music.
What I think would add to the Nikki Einfeld Experience: a little clearer diction in English would solidify my impression of a singer very interested in the character behind the notes.

2. Paul Corona of Illinois
Preferred selection: La Calunnia. Nice heft in the middle, youthful comic energy. If he sounds this good at 22, the best is yet to come.
What I'd like to hear him in: More Rossini for now, and there's time to grow into things like Verdi.
What would add to the Paul Corona Experience: Time, and beefing up the lower part of the voice.

3. Holli Harrison of Tennesee
Preferred selection: L'atra notte from Mefistofele. I shall unabashedly call the top "thrilling" because the word popped into my head while she was singing. Sounds like she could be convinced to cut loose and give us some demented.
What I'd like to hear her in: Verismo.
What would add to the Holli Harrison Experience: I'd like to know if there's more dynamic variation available, especially on the high notes.

4. Seth Keeton of Georgia
Preferred selection: hard to choose, because Claggart's aria fit the voice better but it was just such a treat that he chose "Wie schoen ist doch die Musik" from Schweigsame Frau for one of his offerings. "Thoughtful" is a word that came to mind for his delivery, and I hope I don't need to say that's a big deal.
What I'd like to hear him in: lieder, Britten in a jewelbox house like Glimmerglass.
What would add to the Seth Keeton Experience: A hall better matched to the size of the voice.

5. Donovan Singletary of Florida
Preferred selection: Sorge infausta una procella from Orlando. Impeccable articulation without the tinny early music voice that frequently accompanies it. Incidentally, rather striking headshot, I can't help but say.
What I'd like to hear him in: more Handel, please. Bellini?
What would add to the Donovan Singletary Experience: A more introverted approach to things like Figaro that can go a little over the top if you're not careful.

6. Katherine Jolly of California
Preferred selection: Durch Zaertlichkeit from Abduction/Seraglio. No fear or hesitation in the highest range, which is solid and precise in intonation.
What I'd like to hear her in: I'm thinking we might have a very funny and accurate Cunegonde here.
What would add to the Katherine Jolly Experience: a bit more trust in the voice to convey charm without quite so much frenetic physicality.

7. John Michael Moore of Iowa
Preferred selection: Ein Madchen oder Weibchen, which is a shock since normally it makes me want to run screaming from the theater. The little bit of staging at the very end was actually hilarious. If you were there, you'll know what I'm talking about, but it doesn't retell well. Sonically, a well schooled voice in the mold of Nathan Gunn.
What I'd like to hear him in: Less annoying Mozart. I'm betting Guiglielmo would be a dream, funny and vocally suave.
What would add to the John Michael Moore experience: A bit more punch to the voice; don't know if this was a matter of nerves or the basic quality of it.

8. Marjorie Owens of Virginia
Preferred selection: D'oreste, D'ajace from Idomeneo. Sung with guts at no cost to the Mozart line.
What I'd like to hear her in: Donna Anna for sure, possibly Strauss as the voice has some real muscle.
What would add to the Marjorie Owens experience: A bit of abandon, the courage to hurl the more declamatory lines in the Consul aria out a little less prettily.

Hopefully these don't seem cursory. I was a bit of a wreck when I got in.

Simon O'Neill and Margaret Jane Wray did the halftime show. She's got an enviable instrument but I sometimes think what the hell can you do with Dich Teure Halle. And (we all have bad days) she fumbled on the climactic note. He sounded excellent in "In Fernem Land." JSU, who seems to be back from hiatus, speculates that he's covering Lohengrin, and as I am never able to get very revved about Heppner though I kind of recognize objectively he's a high quality tenor, I have to say I wouldn't mind if Hep had a cold one night.

*unfortunately I was riding my bronco back from the Wild West Ring that wasn't and missed Jonathan Beyer, so I can't write about him, but I heard he was one of the best of the bunch, actually. I couldn't really have judged well anyway, since I tend to find Papageno's suicide aria puts ideas in my head.

Winged Toasters of the Gods

Like anyone, I sometimes imagine what it would be like to be an opera director. Like anyone mentally ill, I suppose I should say. Some of it sounds fun, and some it sounds daunting, and I think the worst thing might be knowing that things that look one way in your head...well, let's take the kookier scenes of a Wagner opera. Somebody has to turn into a snake, for instance. Why, that's no big deal says Director You. It's no longer the 19th century and we have all kinds of technology. And that loud rushing sound you hear is the flushing of the toilet of history, and caught in the unforgiving vortex are the people who think technology is automatically going to help anything.

I'm not a very visual person. I can't picture the characters in books and if there are geographical descriptions, forget it. So I can well imagine not having any idea what it might look like if I had someone turn into a snake by
1) having them put a gold lame kerchief on their head (because contrary to what you've heard, this is not the Native American themed Ring; It's the drag themed Ring. I kid. It's neither. We'll get there)
2) having something explode stage left so they can quickly run offstage right, which is known I think as misdirection in the card trick biz, but unfortunately if you do it twice, the second time everyone's going to be all, hey, I'm watching Alberich when the thing explodes. Oh, there, I've gone and ruined the abstract quality of this little scenario. It was about Alberich all along.
3) having a big, and I mean massive projection of a snake head kind of poke down out of the flies, and then project a bunch more snakes squiggling around. Avoid outright hilarity and pandemonium only by not using any airplane imagery, thereby escaping the possibility the audience will shout en masse, "Snakes on a plane!!!", thump each other on the back, and promptly leave to have a beer and laugh about it.

Bonus points: having Alberich turn into a frog, after misdirection explosion #2, by replacing him with what appears to be a really adorably cute big wind-up frog. [Rather important tangential lesson: you don't want Wagner and cute on the same stage.] I'm just saying "...got the biggest laugh of the evening" was not a phrase I was expecting to use in a Rheingold review.

A day or so ago I wrote that I'm no fan of stultifyingly conservative productions/happy enough with crazy revisionist staging, and I am. But, just..they can't suck is all. I'll try and elaborate, but what it's going to boil down to is that my problem with the talk-of-the-town Zambello American Rheingold is not the lack or horned helmets or even the baffling presence, after the whole thing turned out not to be so Native American as we had heard, of Erda-hontas and other weird cultural mash-ups. Knock yourself out, FZ; put 'em all in white linen suits. Memorial Day is just around the corner, isn't it? The problem is that, unlike many fine Zambello productions, it is just fucking dumb. Clumsy. Sloppy.

I should pause to dole out vocal kudos where due. As far as I'm concerned, honors go to Gordon Hawkins for his well-crafted if not conceptually lived-in Alberich and Elizabeth Bishop for an echt Wagnerienne turn as Fricka. (In long Island you could plug this name in, it occurs to me, to the old joke: Fricka? I hard know 'uh!) The rest of the cast was uniformly at risk of damnation with faint praise, capable but not special. Though I think I should exempt the Froh of Cory Evan Watz, which rose a good bit above good enough; and really all three Rhein maidens (JeeYoung Lee, Frederique Vezina, and Jennifer Hines) for excelling in music that doesn't tend to make or break the opera, but can go quite badly and instead went well. Robert Hale got through the evening fine, but I can't say his performance was particularly gripping, and I don't know that I'd care to hear him in the longer Wotans.

A pretty enthusiastic nod goes to conductor Heinz Fricke, not to be confused with Fricka, or I suppose Heinz 57 Sauce for that matter. His architectural sense of the score was firm. He delivered the goods in climactic moments, ready also to speed along the occasional longeurs of this shortest Ring score. I mean, the bickering in Scene II? That shit can last for hours. It did seem that Fricke met with some orchestral lack of preparation, unless I'm simply that spoiled by the Met. And for some reason the entry of the gods into Valhalla came off as a bit flaccid...perhaps in part because of the "when's this cruise leave for Bermuda" staging and also (small point, but not) because it was not puncuated in the middle by the expected resounding CLANK; rather, the silent and inexplicable image of Donner thrusting that damned architectural t-square he'd been toting around all evening into the ground, as if to say: the next time a bunch of farshtunkeneh dieties ask me to build them a weekend place, I'm upgrading to computer drafting. As well he should, if we're not being all hoity toity about time periods.

Behind, above, and all around these singers was some of the lamest crap. A special nod in this category, the lameness award (a golden crutch) to Mark McCullough, another person whose work I'm sure I've enjoyed elsewhere. I think at Glimmerglass, actually, so you'll know I'm not just being pro forma with the snark-mitigation. The ploddingly literal use of color, from the froggy green of the tarnhelm scene to the stop-sign red for Erda, was [pep talk: ok, Maury. What are the chances someone being written about here will read this? Obviously not that great. Go ahead and be cunty.] embarassing. Only slightly less so: the giant digital graphics projected on a scrim during each orchestral interlude and the riveting opening bars of the opera. No fooling around, can you remember the early days of screen savers with the one where stars were coming at you? Because that was one of them. Don't get me wrong; they were all pretty. They were also reminiscent of a deadly awful Tales of Hoffman I saw as an undergraduate, put on by a department that had just purchased a $10,000 laser and figured they had damn well better use it. As I recall, all it would do was it would spell out the words "Tales of Hoffman" every once in a while, as if wielded by kid who has learned only one trick. Well, it had better be a good trick and not too reminiscent of Koyanisqaatsi, a video game, or (god forfend) a meditation video.

I'm sort of tripping over myself to mention all that was wrong. Because, truly, I'd be remiss in not asking: what in the name of all that is good were the Fafner and Froh costumes about? More presumably unintended visual references here, this time to Freddy Kreuger. Freddy Krueger with huge feet. Please stand and join me in a chorus of "huh?!" I guess it's true what they say about guys with big feet: they build big celestial mansions, and then abduct your sister. And the murder of Fasolt went for nothing, choreographed with all the assurance of a high school play. A middle school play. A Christmas pageant in Fort Stockton, Texas.

I am trying to imagine what went wrong. Zambello was responsible for, among other things I've liked, the Met's enthralling new Troyens a few years back. Perhaps someone was very taken with the idea of an American Ring, and didn't think through what is clearly not a good fit, like how everyone says "Rheingold!" a lot, and no matter what's going on lately with American public education, someone in the audience is bound to recall that an interesting thing about the Rhein is that it's pretty much just not in America. So your supertitles can say "Pure gold!" if you think that's an intellectually honest approach to translation, but if you ask me, they might just as well say "Russ Feingold!" or "Hermione Gingold!"

But as usual, I wasn't consulted. I'm not even going to carp about the clearly audible brouhaha backstage as the sets were changed. Me, I'm just not going back for seconds next year when Walkure two-steps its way onstage.

Next up, today's Met Council National Auditions. Meanwhile, here's a link to a review from someone who liked the above a lot more than I did.

Requiescat;Deer/Antelope

Well, I'm just going to have to admit that I sort of assumed Sarah Caldwell died years ago.

On the agenda: Das Rheingold on the Range, tomorrow night. Relevant query: is there some reason Elena Zaremba gets hired for contralto roles with important companies?

Maury flips randomly through the latest Opera News for your doubtless uncontainable amusement

Ok so now for instance this Salome in Innsbruck, directed by Brigitte "Das L-Wort" Fassbaender? It sounds unstintingly moronic and abgefuckt, and yet I'd love to have been there. Firstly because the soprano was supposedly good, but also, isn't an interesting failure more fun these days than a totally non-embarassing retread of something we've seen forty times? I know--the horse is dead; I can put down the stick.

The whole Judith Blegen story really is awfully sad, though I can't say I know her singing. Maybe I should add her to the roster for the ol' daydream where a celebrity decides you're they're best pal. She seems like she'd be a totally sharp conversationalist but also bake you cookies possibly.

Aright, the cover photo of Trebs I think establishes that she is not merely Opera Hot but in fact rather stunning. As someone or other, ostensibly drag queens, used to say in the '90s: Love your Hair! Hope it wins! So then she gets to explain about the e flat on opening night that was extra special flat, just for you, and how she didn't want to do it in the first place but everyone was like in one of those afterschool specials about peer pressure..."c'mon man...it's just an e flat...everyone else is singin' acuti..." and then the slow mo sets in and the claustrophobic distorted audio of everyone chanting "do it! do it! do it!" and first thing you know, she's out there singing what she very gamely admits was basically a D, and then it's just the gateway note, and she's lunging at mid-phrase high f's for no reason, but in the end all her friends gather around and hug her and she admits she has a problem. I actually once saw a pre-edit text of an interview with Gheorghiu and ever since, it's fun to imagine what these things looked like before they were edited for crazy and edited for non-native.

Totally skipped the article on opera reviewers. It was just going to be too devastating when they were asked for their role models and didn't mention me. So since I didn't read it, it's possible they did mention me--the article exists in a kind of Maury-indeterminate state. It's Schrodinger's puff piece.

Speaking of nothing, since there is absolutely no theme or (let's be honest) point to this posting, will someone try to explain the Scotto thing to me? Because I've never gotten it. I realize most of the time these things can't be explained, but on the other hand it's fun to watch people get really red in the face over their faves. I was just watching the Scotto thing on Parterre, and I know La Cieca is hugely pro-Scotto...whatevs, just if there's some recording I should know that will make the little cartoon lightbulb appear over my head, tell me, and tell me why. Oh but wait, Trebs mentions Scotto. Retroactive relevance.

The Kate Aldrich photo makes me laugh. Think for two seconds about sitting in that position. Nobody would ever, for any reason sit in that position, unless to make the statement "Hey I'm not fat."

It goes without saying I am not reading the article about how Don Elisir du Regiment is a great opera.

Is it just me or does Luana Devol come off a little bit, I dunno, high in her mini-interview?

So, right. I haven't been to the opera in absolute aeons, or anyway like a week and a half, but it seems like I'm going to something or other next week. And I promise to have opinions, and to blather on like a drunken socialite. For today I'm off on a convalescent trip to the country, or something like that, and won't even hear the broadcast, helas!

Odds and Ends

Heavens. James Jorden liked Forza even less than the rest of us.

Meanwhile, we'd say Luisa Miller is imploding, except as it happens, cover Eduardo Villa is a more than competent Verdian.

Query: to see Don Pasquale or not so much?
Argument in favor: everyone coming in waves over Juan Diego Florez, and not just that he's Opera Cute. (I think this is a distinct category from Opera Hot.)
Argument against: it is shite.
Argument in favor: Gilda didn't feel like the perfect Trebs role, and we'd like to give her another shot to knock our socks off.
Argument against: knock knock. who's there? shite.
Argument in favor: Suspense of whether James Levine will in fact fall apart in several pieces on the podium.
Argument against: Slightly tired of opera right now, if that's possible. Oh and p.s. shite.

Not Lost in Translation

A quick note of apology to whoever googled "In Time which Made a Monkey of us All" perhaps looking for the full text of the story by Grace Paley, she whose literary garment I am not fit to kiss the hem of, and ended up here of all places. Does it make your flesh crawl just a bit that I can see what google threads lead to MFI? Well nevermind, it doesn't give me your phone number or anything.

A lovely lad we'll just call Boris gave me a Gala Barbiere di Siviglia (that is in fact a Barbier von Sevilla, geh weiss) after seeing me pick it up and put it down about a hundred and twenty times at Academy. I'm sure I've made my feelings on opera in translation clear--read: known to even the dead--but the cast got the better of me, as happens to all of us I'll wager*. I mean, it'd be silly to turn up one's nose at Wunderlich, Koth, and Prey (oh and Hotter!?!) just because things aren't sonically Mediterranean enough.

Ok, but let's step back for a moment into Maury's World of Negativity. Opera in translation always sounds to me like it's being put on for school children. I just had to say that, and if you agree, stomp your foot or something. And now I'm done with the hatin'. I guess I'll just listen and comment incoherently. If it were coherence you were after, you'd have stopped reading. Oh...hm.

Well this is fascinating to report: the annoying trick of upshifting straight into falsetto on the last "Figaro!" in everyone's favorite cartoon moment is apparently no newer than 1959, and forgivable here only because of the overall charm and suavity of Prey's singing. Note to all other baritones: if a measure of girly voice is the only fun trick in your bag of shtick, just shut up and sing. I wonder if I need an acronym for that, like Dan Savage and his DTMFA: SUAS.

He was a funny looking guy, that Hermann Prey. Seriously large forehead.

Minor note to...producer or someone: if you're doing a bonus track with Reri Grist, why pick a part of the opera that hardly has her in it? Well nevermind. We're not really concerned with Reri Grist here. So am I correct in thinking that Erika Koth's vibrato is so fast and intrusive that I'm the only person in the world capable of liking her voice? I think I'll feel better if someone else likes her, thought it's always fun feeling one's tastes are rarefied I suppose, in a teenage "nobody understands me" sort of way. That's actually a line in Onegin, by the way. Nikto menia ne ponimaet. And yet Tatiana doesn't come off as an unbearable ninny. Koth's ornaments, aright, are a little uber the top, but holy fuck, was that a G? My guitar thinks it was. I'd blow the pipe on her but I don't have one at present. I know, I know, what kind of opera queen...

Considering he's 30 years into a career of Wagner singing by this point, I'd say Hans Hotter makes...still something of a disburbing Rossinian.

[this is how boring the Oscars are: they're on, and I'm watching out of one eye as I listen to disc 2 and continue to write. This is fit treatment for Seventh Heaven but a sad standard for the big gold guy. ed.:and now you know I started this a few nights ago]

I think they left out Berta's aria. Probably she was sung by 75 year old Hildegard von Blutfliessendevondenohren and someone at Gala thought: maybe not. Also seemingly absent, the lesson aria, although perhaps what's missing is my ability to translate German track names into Italian via English. (One would end up with something out of "English as She is Spoke," the phrasebook that spawned phrases such as "to craunch a marmoset," which I encourage you to use when possible.) Oh wait. Best actor. I heart Ph. Seymour Hoffman but that was a boring damn speech.

Wunderlich is like puppies or something: so universally liked that it's just incredibly boring to say anything about him, because it's just going to amount to "yeah, me too." Would that have been funnier if instead of "puppies" I'd said "oral sex," do you suppose? That's one reliable thing about Maury, he always shows his work. For the record, Fritz sounds like he could have sung it standing on his Kopf. Juggling. Knives.

I cannot help but note that Keilberth does not blow in Rossini, a surprise after many years of hating his recordings of German rep. And having so noted, cannot help but wonder if reviews of random recordings are in the least entertaining. And on that note of insecurity I still my keyboard for now, though I just got a couple of other swell ones (and a DVD of Simionato et al in Aida, on the visual end of things.)

*and today what do I do? I go and stumble upon the absolutely rotten, absolutely wonderful fact that Mazeppa was recorded in the 50's at the Florence May Festival with Olivero, Christoff, and Bastiannini. My keen intuition tells me Olivero probably did not enroll in Berlitz for the pleasure of one memorable Mazurka with Chaikovsky.

I just met a boy named Mazeppa

Mazeppa, Mazeppa, Mazeppa...say it once and there's music playing. Oh. There actually is music playing. Nevermind.

I have to really crank this out because I refuse to be beaten to the punchline on one hilarious moment in an otherwise pretty beautiful production of a rather riveting opera. See the thing is...did you listen to the opera quiz I guess it was last week? They were talking about names that got changed in for instance German productions of Butterfly, where apparently Pinkerton would be [if I'm reading between the lines correctly] like the equivalent of being named Benjamin Franklin "Penis" Wankerboy. And not that anyone ever puts on Mazeppa, because they're busy putting on crap like Forza instead, but if they did, I'd like to suggest they make up a title if possible, but eliminate from their Met Titles the word "hetman." It just gets funnier each time it pops up on that little screen. "I once was hetman," said one screen, calling to mind some kind of imaginary ex-straight ministry's rewriting of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

So anyway a New York audience gave a warm though not altogether rapturous reception to the Metropolitan Opera's premiere of Chaikovsky's Mazeppa, if you hadn't gathered already that was what I was going to write about. Bear in mind this was a Monday night performance without the courtesy of a 7:30 curtain and perhaps this accounts for the lack of hysteria.

I'm a tiny bit reluctant to judge voices from side orch "I have Friends Under 30 Who are Willing to Score me these Seats" seats, as one is in a sort of echo chamber. Naturally, the preceeding sentence is purely formulaic language, and I'm going to judge them all to hell and gone.

But first the production, which I hear got some boos from the schmancy seats. I think the thing about George Tsypin is he has this knockout combination of a dark, crazy, out of control side combined with a childlike sense of wonder. Now, bear in mind, there's nothing I find so distasteful and generally emetic as a childlike sense of wonder, except when you combine that with the other part, it all works out. The tableau at the end of the second act is for my betters to describe. All I can say is it was like you were playing a Ukrainian history themed pinball machine and you hit the ball in the little hole all the way up top and got 100,000 points.

It didn't hurt that in the foreground, Olga Guryakova was running around in circles with a severed head in her hands, while Larissa Diadkova fainted, stage left. Larissa Diadkova is a virtuoso fainter, and that's the truth. She's also, as you know if you saw her Azucena or Fricka, an all around fine actress with a voice that isn't quite luxuriant on its purely sonic merits, but is always wielded intelligently, sometimes daringly. It's strange to think what a cypher she was as Herodias, when everything else I've heard her sing has been uniformly top drawer. I wonder what that was about. Eh. Don't care.

Her Act II scena with Guryakova must surely have been the vocal highlight of the evening. Guryakova is an extremely game and appealing singer with a top that sounds to me like by no means a sure bet, but when it gets there, you know it. The vocal production is unabashedly Slavic, and I for one couldn't be happier about it. And I suspect she's Opera Khot, though I left my binocs back at the palazzo.

Oh wait but back to the production. Can I be king of the world for a minute and make a new rule where I get a dollar for every minute the fucking scrim is down? Generally, this is distracting. Here it was actually very actively a problem in places--you couldn't see, for instance, that Kochubei's head was covered in blood from a long day of torture until about fifteen minutes after Lyubov more or less had kittens about it. And you couldn't see her rather gorgeous opalescent purple dress until the curtain call. It's Kochubei, right? I keep wanting to type Kochujang, but that's actually a fermented red pepper paste indispensible in Korean cuisine. Delicious, seriously, but not relevant even by my standards.

The fantastic costumes were designed by one Tatiana Noginova, herself working a sort of Bettie Boop look, at her curtain call. At the Millo Pole, Dawn Fatale was heard to remark of Noginova's get-ups for the ballet in the first act how lovely it was that they got their costumes at Fredericks of Vladivostok. Why Dawn doesn't blog is a mystery to me, helpless as I always am rendered by her wit.

Wait, there were boys in this opera.

Putilin makes the logical first choice of subject; it's just that I haven't made up my mind about him. It's a long, tough sing and he poured himself into it, even doing an "Anything Karita Mattila can do, I can do lower" number where he sang, flat on his back, with his head hanging backward over a step, just like KM did in her Salome. Points were awarded. Still, there were mishaps, the voice losing its lustre at climactic moments and also in soft ones. It's not like I have a lot of Mazzep to compare him to, but I can hear, in that center of my brain that is assigned to "fantasy football" in straight guys, a baritone I'd like better. He sounds like the love child of Tita Ruffo and Pavel Lisitsian.

The venerable Paata Burchuladze, I had heard from reliable sources, is sounding sometimes lousy these days, but not here. You wouldn't mistake him for a young singer, but the goods are still there, which is a phrase I'm afraid I'm overusing lately. It is after all nice being a bass: the important part of your voice ages but generally doesn't break. Depending on your tolerance for wobble, your mileage may vary, but I didn't find myself lunging for the dramamine.

The only real weakness in this cast was Balashov as Andrei and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. (Did you have that book as a kid? That boy had nothing on our Andrei.) Balashov's strengths don't justify his weaknesses, I'm afraid: if the voice were one of those Galuzinoid monsters, we'd forgive the sliding up to pitch and the sliding almost up to pitch and such. It ain't/we don't.

Really I ought to say something about the score, since it's so unfamiliar to most of us, but for the most part I'd like to leave that to folks like Alex Ross, both Aleces in fact (it pluralizes like matrix, I'm assuming) who know what the hell they're talking about. All I can offer are vague impressions of surprise and delight that the composer whose operatic output I had imagined to be typified by Evgenii Onegin, a wonderful but relatively polite work, has a much darker range on his palette. Onegin is, yes, also a lot tighter, but Mazeppa succeeds on different territory altogether. It's tempting now to think of Chaikovski/Pushkin as one of those Mozart/DaPonte, Strauss/von Hoffmansthal pairings, albeit not a living collaboration. Hang on, though. I'm forgetting about Pikovaia Dama, whose libretto is a total abortion. Anyway the point is Chaikovsky's range of expression is perhaps equal to Pushkin's own.

So, yeah, this is pretty much another run-don't-walk though I think my companions were even more enthusiastic. I'm not kidding--I'm a deeply negative person, ask anyone. I'm just finding a lot to recommend this season.

Next up: actually I have no idea. You'll know when I know.

p.s. thanks to "linguitte3" who linked me on a NY Times discussion forum. Really, though, linguitte3, I am excited; I just have a way of talking, I'm afraid! I don't visibly lose my shit unless...well, cf. my Podles review.

Market Correction

Hey, serious question for you: didn't Juan Pons suck for a while? Because he totally doesn't right now; quite the opposite. And that's the best news I have from last night's Forza.

Really, after the last few things I've attended, I think it's fair play on the part of the universe to take it down a notch. And I knew what I was getting into...Forza is a show that finds me furiously reading the plot synopsis, looking for shortcuts. Plus I'd probably seen this clunker of a production on tv--wasn't this the one telecast with Sharon Sweet, or was that a uniquely boring nightmare I had?

Rataplan rataplan rataplan! See, it's no more charming or in fact bearable when I do it. I'd have to diagnose Ildiko Komlosi, who I'd be surprised if the Met is rataplanning to invite back much, as not conspicuously talented, perfectly adequate and rather pretty.

But ok, Voigt was in really nice form. I'm almost tired of praising her singing, and tempted instead to say: Deb, sugar, you are looking super. But I'll pull myself together and comment instead that the mildly shouty quality of last year's Ballo is gone, the messa di voce is working, and she connected with Verdi stylistically in a way I wouldn't have guessed she would from her Aidas. I don't think anyone will remember this as one of her great roles, but it's a feather in her cap nonetheless. And she looks hilarious as a boy. There is no denying this.

Delavan is a singer who (in Parsifal, in Chicago, for example) has knocked the wind out of me, but he didn't at all last night, for whatever reason. There was something hollow about the sound he was producing that I hope is not chronic.

I'm going to admit something. I'm having a rotten time writing about this goddamn Forza. I did get to watch a hilariously concise set of gestures from one box patron to another that managed to encapsulate with remarkable economy: 1) stop rustling that godforsaken paper 2) because it's getting in the way of me listening to this intensely boring opera so 3) sorry, not trying to be overly cunty, but 4) STOPIT STOPIT STOPIT. Oh and I hear someone had, to say the least, severe indigestion in Family Circle, about which: ew. But it's something to write about. Which the production itself isn't, nor is Licitra really. Pretty voice; nothing going on.

So with that, I throw in the towel or the cowl or something. Monday is Mazeppa and at the very least I can act all knowledgeable because I am with the speaking of the Russian.

Oh wait, though. I'd like to take a second to dedicate a song to Samuel Ramey, and that song is "I will Always Love You." Not the sweet, guileless Dolly Parton original, but rather the big hideous Whitney Houston cover, I think. He looks 90 if a day, but he's still an Artist.

In the Jinx Department: Alex von Wellsung delivers a more measured meh.