Happy 56th Birthday, Rossini

Fifty-six is no age for a composer and so it is little wonder that Rossini - or at least his music - is alive and well. Born on February 29th, 1792, Gioachino Antonio Rossini soon discovered a penchant and talent in culinary appreciation as well as note-churning. The latter he put to use for the creation of almost 40 operas, the former to support his stately appearance.

So much has been written about Rossini, that I would not likely contribute anything new on this special Rossini-day - so instead I list below all that has been written about Rossini on Ionarts over the last few years.

Except, before I do that, I still want to rehash some reasonably well known stories about Rossini, just because they are too good to pass up on - and because they endear the composer to me, if not always his music.

There is, of course, the story that when Rossini laid on bed composing and he dropped a sheet of freshly written music, rather than making the effort to climb off the bed and pick it up, he simply wrote the music out, again. Consider this - and that tiny little Rossini's daycare consisted of a pork butchery, where he got to watch the production of sausages - and listen to his music carefully...

The most enduring story about Rossini may well be his admission to having cried only three times in his life: Once after his first opera (La cambiale di matrimonio) had a disastrous premiere. Then again when he heard Paganini play. And finally when he witnessed a truffle-stuffed turkey fall overboard in a picnic boating accident. (Sharp tongues might point out that Rossini would have known all about turkeys, but that's just not a nice thing to say on such a rare birthday.)


Rossini on ionarts:

Lawrence Brownlee, classical voice

Another evening of Arias
CDT, October 20, 2016

Lawrence Brownlee Returns to Wolf Trap

An evening of Arias
CDT, March 28, 2016

Rossini's 'Semiramide' in Concert

CD Review
CDT, November 24, 2015

Dismally Banal 'Tell' at Covent Garden

Commentary
CDT, July 03, 2015

Second Opinion: 'Cenerentola' at WNO

Opera Review
RRR, May 13, 2015

In Search of the Perfect Mousetrap: WNO's 'La Cenerentola'

Opera Review
CDT, May 11, 2015

Ionarts-at-Large: Rossini in San Francisco

Opera Review
RRR, November 26, 2013

Briefly Noted: More of Pappano's Rossini

CD Review
CDT, August 27, 2013

Ionarts at Santa Fe: The Lady without a Lake

Opera Review
CDT, August 02, 2013

Operatic Threesome, Damrau Glitters in 'Ory'

DVD Review
CDT, June 21, 2012

Guillaume Tell

DVD Review
CDT, October 14, 2011

Briefly Noted: Julia Lezhneva

CD Review, Rossini Arias
CTD, October 6th, 2011

Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 9 )

Concert Review, Stabat Mater
jfl, August 15th, 2011

8½ Turks in Italy at Wolf Trap Opera

Opera Review, Il Turco...
CTD, July 14th, 2010

'Cinderella' Not a Dream Come True

Opera Review
Sophia Vastek, September 28th, 2009

'Barber of Seville' as Cartoon, and Not with Bugs Bunny

Opera Review
CTD, September 15th, 2009

Wall of Horns (Munich Opera Festival 2008)

Concert Review, Works for Horn Octet
jfl, August 19th, 2008

Washington Concert Opera: Bianca e Falliero

Opera Review
CTD, April 15th, 2008

Opera on DVD: Il Viaggio a Reims

DVD Review
CTD, November 27th, 2007

Ionarts in Siena: Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Stabat mater dolorosa, 64th Settimana Musicale Senese, Siena
CTD, July 16th, 2007

Rossini's Otello, Washington Concert Opera

WCO
Sonya Harway, May 1st, 2007

Flórez's Breakthrough

CD Review, Matilde di Shabran
CTD, February 28th, 2007

Two Comedies of Errors

Il Viaggio a Reims, Kirov Opera, Kennedy Center, Washington
jfl, February 4th, 2007

Siege of Baltimore

L'Assedio di Corinta, Baltimore Lyric Opera
CTD, October 16th, 2006

Frolics and Frippery: A Roll in the Hay with Rossini

Le Comte Ory, Wolftrap
Richard K. Fitzgerarld, July 22nd, 2006

Summer Opera 2006: "Barber of Seville" in St. Louis

Preview - Barber of Seville, St.Louis
CTD, June 23rd, 2006

Il Viaggio a St. Petersburg

Il Viaggio a Reims, Kirov Opera, Mariinksy Theater, St.Petersburg
Oksana Khadarina, May 30th, 2006

Let's Do Silly Things in Algeria

L'Italiana in Algeri, Washington National Opera
jfl, May 16th, 2006

Tancredi: Sounds Good

Tancredi, Washington Concert Opera
jfl, April 6th, 2006

Summer Opera: La Cenerentola at Wolf Trap

La Cenerentola, Wolf Trap
CTD, August 21st, 2005

Summer Opera: Barber of Seville in Santa Fe

Barber of Seville, Santa Fe
CTD, July 23rd, 2005

Even Google celebrates Rossini today:

Lawrence Brownlee, classical voice

Donizetti & Bellini: Allegro io son, L. Brownlee, Kaunas City Symphony, Kaunas State Choir, C. Orbelian (2016)

The Kennedy Center is skewing toward more popular forms of entertainment. It has turned out to be the hallmark of the tenure of the organization's new president, Deborah Rutter. In a formula familiar from many concert presenters, Renée Fleming has been called in to offer some star advice, for a set of concerts unimaginatively called "Renée Fleming VOICES." (Capital letters make it different!) The new series kicked off with its sole classical performance, by tenor Lawrence Brownlee. The rest of the season features jazz, musical theater, and cabaret.

It always takes my ears a few moments to adjust to the active vibrato in Brownlee's voice. Not unpleasant in any way, it is a prominent flutter, tightly coiled, but after some time passes my ear adjusts to it and can still perceive the center of the pitch. True to form Brownlee's strongest work came in arias from bel canto operas. Brownlee hit the first big high notes of the evening in "Seul sur la terre," from Donizetti's Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal. That vibrato, among other advantages, gives a high-energy buzz to Brownlee's notes off the top of the staff, which do not sound floated, in the sense that there is intensity and effort in them. This was more apparent in the even higher notes in "Terra amica," from Rossini's Zelmira, which was truly thrilling as Brownlee showed off the virtuosity of his runs and top notes. A close second was the closing set of spirituals, in classic arrangements by H. T. Burleigh.

A set of Strauss songs was more successful than seemed likely given Brownlee's strengths. The German diction was not always clear but especially in subtle songs like "Breit' über mein Haupt" he brought the same silky clarity and gentle phrasing that make his bel canto singing so pretty. With "Morgen" and "Die Nacht" pianist Justina Lee, for much of the evening merely a competent accompanist, was integral to the beauty of the performance. Finally with "Cäcilie," both artists cranked up the excitement for the song's dramatic climax, which was thrilling. An opening set of Liszt songs, some of which were heard more beautifully from Angela Meade in August, impressed less. With all due respect to i nostri amici italiani, if I never hear a set of these Italian art songs again for a decade, that would be fine by me. All was forgiven, however, by the choice of encore, a plangent rendition of Donizetti's Una furtiva lagrima.

The best news of the evening is that the Kennedy Center has fixed the buzzing sound that plagued concerts in the Family Theater earlier in the fall. The sound, something like a vibrating light fixture, was absent on Tuesday evening, although there was still just a whisper of unwelcome noise, perhaps from the ventilation system.

Lawrence Brownlee stars in Washington National Opera's upcoming production of Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment (November 12 to 20, but in only five of the eight performances), in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

At Washington Classical Review

Charles T. Downey, Washington Concert Opera marks 30 years with a bel canto feast (Washington Classical Review, September 19)

---, Critic’s Choice for 2016-17 season (Washington Classical Review, September 13)

Lawrence Brownlee Returns to Wolf Trap

Rossini, Virtuoso Arias, L. Brownlee, Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra, C. Orbelian (Delos, 2014)

The last time that Lawrence Brownlee returned to his old stomping ground at Wolf Trap Opera, to help celebrate the company's 40th anniversary, he sang to his strengths, in Italian bel canto opera. When the American tenor appeared on Friday night, for the latest in the series of Wolf Trap alumni recitals on Friday night, the repertory was Italian, but less challenging and, frankly, less interesting art songs that paled in comparison. On the other hand, one can understand Brownlee's decision to take it easy on himself, as he is in the midst of preparations to reprise the role of Charlie Parker in Philadephia Opera's new opera Yardbird, this weekend in New York.

Anyone who has ever taken voice lessons, including yours truly, has sung at least one of the first four songs on this program, working from Schirmer's classic collection of Twenty-Four Italian Songs and Arias. They are sturdy, overdone pieces, hardly scintillating fare, and Brownlee did nothing to make them stand out in any particular way, reinforcing my impression that he is not really a natural recitalist. His busily intense vibrato went a little haywire on the first one, Torelli's Tu lo sai, although that may have just been nerves, since in other slow pieces, like Scarlatti's O cessate di piagarmi, the vibrato was less noticeable. As in his opera repertory, he excels in fast pieces with lots of runs, so Legrenzi's Che fiero costume was better suited to him, although Rossini's careening La Danza posed some challenges to his accompanist, company director Kim Pensinger Witman, although in all other respects, she was a sensitive musical partner, as always.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, Here’s why Lawrence Brownlee is a rising opera star (Washington Post, March 29) Peter Benecke, Stunning Brownlee Recital in Weill Capped by High C's (Classical Sonoma, March 11)

High notes, for which Brownlee is renowned, were few and far between, starting with a high A in a lovely rendition of Bellini's Malinconia, Ninfa gentile and even higher in Rossini's La lontananza. He took his time phrasing the delicately sad lines of Bellini's La Ricordanza, reworked by the composer from the soprano aria Qui la voce in I Puritani, and in Rossini's L'esule, with the beautiful refrain "ma questo suol non è la Patria mia" (but this soil is not my Fatherland). Brownlee is working on a crossover album of popular song favorites, which he tried out for the first time in the second half of this recital (not reviewed). While I would have welcomed another listening to Brownlee's Gospel arrangements instead, this set did not yet sound quite fully formed.

Rossini's 'Semiramide' in Concert

Rossini, Semiramide (complete), A. Penda, M. Pizzolato, Virtuosi Brunensis, A. Fogliani (Naxos, 2013) (released on October 23, 2015) Paraty 135205 | 68'02"

Semiramis probably never existed. "Empress over many tongues," as Dante called her, she was Queen of Babylon, often associated with the story of the Tower of Babel. Dante condemned her to the Circle of the Lustful in Inferno because of her many sexual escapades, even supposedly with her own son. Upset by society's disapproval of her proclivities, Semiramis took advantage of her position as ruler, having succeeded her husband on the throne, and simply changed the laws of the state to make what she did legal. "She was so given to the vice of lechery," Dante wrote in Inferno, Canto V, in the translation by Prof. Robert Hollander, "she made lust licit in her law / to take away the blame she had incurred."

Semiramide, Rossini's last Italian opera before moving to Paris, rarely sees the stage today, long after its premiere at La Fenice in 1823. It is a perfect option for Washington Concert Opera, which regularly brings top-notch performances of operas you will likely never hear anywhere else in Washington. The score has some gorgeous music, but the libretto, by Gaetano Rossi after a play by Voltaire, is a dud. Spanning three and a half hours when it is complete, the opera requires some cuts, but this performance excised only about fifteen minutes of music. Without some magnificent sets and costumes to distract the eye, it made for a long but mostly enjoyable evening in the theater.

Australian soprano Jessica Pratt was outstanding in the title role, with broad power at the top to carry over the full textures, a shimmering high pianissimo, and excellent agility in the melismatic passages. She was regal in vocal presence, the only reservation being a low range that did not really carry. Sadly, she was not matched well with mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, who has always impressed in Baroque opera recordings but not so much in 19th-century opera when a large hall has to be filled with sound. Genaux brilliantly handled the fioriture as Arsace, whom Semiramide wishes to take as her lover before discovering he is her long-lost son, but the voice just did not have enough heft, requiring conductor Antony Walker to rein in his orchestra whenever she sang.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Stars dimmer than expected in the concert Rossini opera ‘Semiramide’ (Washington Post, November 24) David Rohde, ‘Semiramide’ with Washington Concert Opera at Lisner Auditorium (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, November 23)

Tenor Taylor Stayton made a fine Idreno, the man who wants to marry Azema, the woman Arsace loves, with a heroic squillo that was just nasal enough to have clarion force. Bass-baritone Wayne Tigges had plenty of braying sound as Assur, the man who helped Semiramide poison her husband, but often seemed to hit only every other note when his part went into florid runs. Evan Hughes made a blustery Oroe, the Babylonian high priest, and in the supporting cast, Wei Wu and Natalie Conte had pleasing turns as the ghost of Semiramide's husband and Azema, respectively.

The orchestra and chorus both sounded under-rehearsed and maybe under-staffed, in the case of the chorus, where a seemingly smaller number of singers were not as sure as they could have been. The four horns, which feature in the final scene of Act I, when Semiramide announces that she will marry Arsace, and in the overture, were on the money, but the string sound was often ragged. Too many early entrances (timpani, trumpet) and flubbed notes contributed to the sense of general confusion, in spite of Walker's best attempts to wade through all that music at the podium.

Hopefully, things will be in better shape for the second performance of Washington Concert Opera, featuring Donizetti's La Favorite, starring Ionarts favorite Kate Lindsey (March 4, 2016).

Dismally Banal 'Tell' at Covent Garden

Sometimes it is good to know that you can still hit a nerve. Italian director Damiano Michieletto certainly did with his new production of Rossini's Guillaume Tell, which opened earlier this week at the Royal Opera in London. As reported by Rupert Christiansen for The Telegraph, the booing started long before the curtain call:

Unprecedentedly at Covent Garden, the abusive heckling threatened to turn nasty while the opera was actually still in progress, as a nameless female character was pruriently stripped naked and raped in blatant contradiction to the spirit of the music. [...] But what can one say about Damiano Michieletto’s dismally banal production, which drains the opera of all its romantic nationalism and bucolic charm without putting anything enriching its place? [...]

In the interests of keeping it all gritty, the music for the ballet sequences becomes the pretext for elaborate dumb shows, the second of which gratuitously and graphically depicts the aforementioned gang rape. This caused a near-riot of protest in the Gods, with which I warmly sympathised.

If this sort of interpretation represents the future of opera, then God help us all.

Ah, the dumb show going with an overture or ballet music, where so many directors go so far awry. No word from Christiansen, though, on whether the supernumerary actress was fat.

Tara Erraught's U.S. Debut

Rossini, La Cenerentola, C. Bartoli, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, R. Chailly (Decca, 1993)

Charles T. Downey, D.C. Cenerentola Weighs In With Splendid Singing
Classical Voice North America, May 13

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A decade after Deborah Voigt lost a role because of how she would look in a revealing black dress, have popular culture’s obsessions with youth and body image become the norm in the world of opera? The reaction of British critics to Tara Erraught’s performance a year ago, as Octavian in the Glyndebourne Festival’s production of Der Rosenkavalier, struck a chord around the world as taking the trend a step too far. The Irish-born mezzo-soprano’s American stage debut, in the second cast of Washington National Opera’s production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola on May 11, offered the chance to hear — and see — her for ourselves.

The fat-shaming critics, all men, were uncomfortably ad hominem — or ad mulierem — in their assessment of Erraught’s body...

[Continue reading]

Rossini, La Cenerentola
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

SEE ALSO:
Robert R. Reilly, Second Opinion: 'Cenerentola' at WNO (Ionarts, May 13)

Second Opinion: 'Cenerentola' at WNO

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

Tara Erraught (Angelina), David Portillo (Don Ramiro), and Cast in La Cenerentola, Washington National Opera, 2015 (photo by Scott Suchman)

I seldom go to operas “cold turkey,” i.e., without having seen a prior production or without even having heard the music, but one certainly gets a fresh look by doing so. I went to the Washington National Opera’s production of Rossini’s Cinderella, on the evening of May 11, 2015, on the strength of my great love for The Barber of Seville, perhaps the greatest comic opera ever written. I went expecting to be disappointed since nothing could be as great as The Barber, which Rossini wrote the year before Cinderella, which he dashed off in a matter of weeks. However, I was not disappointed. In fact, I was generally delighted. This opera is almost as musically funny as The Barber and, while the humor in it is very broad (and this production makes it even broader), it makes for a delightfully amusing evening. (This was the first performance of the company's second cast; see Charles's review of the first cast from opening night.)

The production actually looks more like Alice in Wonderland than Cinderella. The vivid costume designs are almost cartoonish, and the acting style is, at times, out of the silent movies, with a lot of mugging. That is not necessarily a criticism, but a description. The whole thing is done in such a lighthearted style, it is difficult to criticize. However, that is what critics do; so I shall express several reservations, along with lavish praise.

First of all, I should say that the singing was uniformly fine. As Cinderella, Tara Erraught was vocally strong (especially in the closing scene), but needed to show more fragility and vulnerability in her characterization of the role. She comes off as too tough, not one to be bossed around by the mean sisters or anyone else. She seemed to give as well as she got. This was a partial misstep that somewhat undermined the drama. She should at least seem to be needing rescue. As the Prince, David Portillo was spot on vocally and dramatically. His performance was stirring. The two wicked sisters, Deborah Nansteel and Jacqueline Echols, both gave robust performances, Echols particularly so.

In the key role of the stepfather, Don Magnifico, Italian baritone Paolo Bordogna gave a very flavorful, nearly histrionic rendition of his part, which was generally hilarious, especially the scene in the wine cellar, which he played to the hilt. Playing things over the top is not a problem in a production this broad, but Bordogna let us know once too often that he knew he was playing it over the top – which is a problem. It distracts and detracts to let the audience know that you know you are funny. In any case, he was a guilty pleasure.

Italian bass-baritone Simone Alberghini got the balance just right in his portrayal of the valet Dandini, who trades places with the Prince in order to deceive the mean sisters. Both his singing and comic timing were excellent. He was very funny, but not self-consciously so. He knew how to keep the humor within his character. He played very well with the Prince. A welcome note of gravitas, both in terms of singing and dramatic stage presence, was provided by bass-baritone Shenyang as Alidoro. He knows how to be still, and still command attention. He perfectly portrayed the overseeing providential presence that restores the place of goodness and steers all things to their desired consummation.

The ensemble singing was a particular pleasure throughout the evening. I cannot think of a vocal quartet, quintet, sextet or septet that was not delightfully done. The sextet with the Prince, Dandini, Don Magnifico, Cinderella and the two sisters early in the second act after the Prince’s carriage accident was a particular delight – like listening to a vocal version of popcorn.

The septet at the Prince’s banquet table was also well done, but the singers should not have had to compete with the downstage mice, who, in front of the banquet table, engaged in various gymnastics. By the way, these half-dozen rodent characters were close to omnipresent throughout the opera. They were charming and made sense in the baron’s rundown château, where it was logical that mice should be, but what were they doing in the Prince’s palace other than helping to move the props? For director Joan Font to have allowed for such a major distraction in the banquet scene tells us that he did not trust the material Rossini had given him for it. Regarding the mice, if the prince really loves Cinderella, the first thing he should do is call an exterminator.

Font, however, did a generally fine job of keeping things moving and lively. One minor error was his staging of Cinderella’s entrance at the ball, which should have been grander – probably through the large upstage doors. Instead, we see her sidestepping along an upper catwalk to get to the stage-right staircase, which she then descends. It was a bit anticlimactic. Also, I think the closing touch of presenting the opera as if it had been in a dream with poor Cinderella still sweeping the floor was gratuitous and an unnecessary downer. After all, the opera’s subtitle is Goodness Triumphant (a fact that goes unmentioned in any of the WNO program notes), not Cinderella’s escapist daydream and her return to serfdom. My reaction to the director’s note as to why he did this is: it is a mistake to over-interpret a soufflé.

Italian conductor Speranza Scappucci and the Washington National Opera Orchestra were on point throughout the performance, delivering very deft orchestral support. They played the overture with nuance and sparkle.

I noticed that there was a large group of young people (I would guess in the later stages of grade school) up in the third balcony. I cannot think of a better introduction for them to opera – except, of course, The Barber of Seville. I know that my 15-year-old son enjoyed it as much as I did.

This production runs through May 21, with next Saturday's performance (May 16, 7 pm) shown in simulcast at Nationals Park.

In Search of the Perfect Mousetrap: WNO's 'La Cenerentola'

La Cenerentola, Washington National Opera, 2015 (photo by Scott Suchman)
It turns out that Rossini's La Cenerentola is not a very good opera. It was moderately funny and cute the first time I saw it, but its charms have worn thinner with each subsequent viewing. Fortunately, it has come under review only twice before here -- from Wolf Trap in 2005 and from Opera Vivente in 2009 -- and the latest production, from Washington National Opera, did not change my mind at its opening on Saturday night in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

This was not for lack of beautiful singing, led by mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, whose Angelina was rapid-fire and laser-focused in runs, although her slightly nasal tone turned unpleasant as her breath support faded. The best buffo nonsense came from Italian bass-baritone Simone Alberghini's Dandini, who hammed up his delight in taking the role usually played by his master, the Prince, and lording it over everyone. Italian baritone Paolo Bordogna, in an uneven company debut as Angelina's abusive stepfather, went too far in his comic antics, not necessarily matched by vocal goods. Russian tenor Maxim Mironov had a more solid company debut as the actual Prince, Don Ramiro, with a rather light sound, even on the highest notes, matched by a sort of nondescript stage presence. Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Jacqueline Echols and especially Deborah Nansteel, who was more present vocally, were moderately funny as the wicked stepsisters, while Shenyang's Alidoro was officious but robust.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, In Washington National Opera’s ‘Cinderella,’ parts are better than sum (Washington Post, May 11) Terry Ponick, WNO’s ‘Cinderella’: A longish evening of colorful family fun (Communities Digital News, May 11)

Part of what made the experience so tedious was the heavy-handed staging by Spanish director Joan Font, with rather bland sets (Joan Guillén, who also designed the obnoxiously over-colored costumes) lit and otherwise tarted up with raucous colors (lighting designed by Albert Faura). A team of supernumerary mice was a constant, nagging distraction, and by the end of a long evening I would have stood and cheered if some large traps had put an end to their shenanigans on stage. (I much prefer my regular encounters with Nibbles, the real-life KC Mouse, on those occasional late nights filing the overnight review of the National Symphony Orchestra.)

The other thing that goaded my ear was the inability or unwillingness of conductor Speranza Scappucci to reign in the singers on the platform: in most pieces in fast tempos, all evening long, the singers ran away with the tempo and Scappucci let them go, forcing the orchestra to keep up with them. Scappucci also accompanied the recitatives, capably enough, from a harpsichord mounted on a gigantic stand in front of her, although a piano or even just the cello by itself was more likely what accompanied the recitatives in 1817 when the opera premiered (the autograph score has only a cello line, with no chords or figures).

This production runs through May 21, with next Saturday's performance (May 16, 7 pm) shown in simulcast at Nationals Park.

NSO at Wolf Trap

Ravel, Piano Concertos (inter alia), J.-Y. Thibaudet, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, C. Dutoit (Decca, 1997)

Charles T. Downey, National Symphony Orchestra shines in quiet moments at Wolf Trap (Washington Post, July 21, 2014)

The National Symphony Orchestra’s summer season at Wolf Trap includes a lot of fluff, quite appropriately. Friday night’s concert in the Filene Center was an exception, featuring three pieces that the group might perform on subscription concerts at the Kennedy Center. In fact, the last time the NSO played two of these pieces, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, was as recent as the spring of 2013.

Little matter, since one does not really expect to be surprised by unusual repertory at an outdoor concert in the summer. The pleasure of this sort of event is in being part of a large listening community, more casual about.... [Continue reading]

National Symphony Orchestra
With Andrew Litton (conductor) and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano)
Filene Center at Wolf Trap

PREVIOUSLY:
Andrew Litton last with NSO (2012)

Ravel G major concerto: NSO with Jeremy Denk (2013); San Francisco Symphony with Jean-Yves Thibaudet (2006)

Tchaikovsky, fourth symphony (NSO, 2013)

Briefly Noted: If It Ain't Baroque

Bel Canto (Rossini, Mercadante, Mozart, Monteverdi, Bellini, Verdi, Donizetti), S. Kermes, Concerto Köln, C. M. Mueller (released on October 29, 2013) Sony 886443810594 | 63'20"

It is probably enough to recommend German soprano Simone Kermes to say that she has been a favorite in Baroque music for conductors like Alan Curtis, Werner Erhardt, and Andrea Marcon. Let me add that, quibbles about a few odd vocal mannerisms aside, her compilations of Baroque arias have been among my all-time favorites, especially her Amor sacro disc, a collection of operatic motets by Vivaldi, which remains my favorite recording of that composer's vocal music ever made. So when Christoph M. Mueller and Concerto Köln release an album with Kermes, stretching from Monteverdi and Mozart into the bel canto repertory, I want to hear it. Kermes is a sometimes odd person -- see this interview for a sampling ("I sang a Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen in Paris once and as an encore I did a high C on the end. In Leipzig they would kill me for that.") -- and the eccentricity comes across in the singing at times, but while she may sometimes raise your eyebrows, she is always memorable. The willingness to go out on a limb will lead to some spectacular failures, as well as exciting triumphs, and this foray into the 19th century is one of the former. Kermes does not have the dramatic soprano weight to do the bel canto pieces justice: her straightened and compressed tone sounds merely coy in "Casta diva," "Dopo l'oscuro nembo" from Bellini's Adelson e Salvini, and "Tu del mio Carlo al seno" from Verdi's I Masnadieri, for example. Her runs and fireworks, so sparkling in the Baroque repertoire, sound labored here, with lots of breathiness to separate the notes, and the high notes are too often anemic. She is better in lighter comic arias, like "In questo semplice modesto asilo" from Donizetti's comic opera Betly, and in pure showpieces like the Queen of the Night's arias, a role she was to have undertaken with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in April (and at the Baden Baden Festival) but had to cancel.

Ionarts-at-Large: Rossini in San Francisco

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from out West.

Photo assumed courtesy San Francisco Opera, very possibly © Cory Weaver.

On November 13^th, the San Francisco Opera offered a big valentine to Gioachino Rossini, who was present on stage either in the form of a giant six-foot tall bust at the opening, or as a bas relief on the upper wall, for the remainder of a scintillating performance of The Barber of Seville. At the appearance of the bust, I suspected that this production, which comes from the Lithuanian National Opera (inspired by Emilio Sagi’s production for the Teatro Real), might prove to be too self-conscious, which is fatal for comedy, but it was not—except in a few minor instances. In fact, so infused with fun was this staging that it made the opera seem 200 years young.

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Briefly Noted: More of Pappano's Rossini

Rossini, Petite Messe Solennelle, M. Rebeka, S. Mingardo, F. Meli, A. Esposito, Coro e Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, A. Pappano (released on April 23, 2013) EMI 4 16742 2 | 103'19"

This is the latest in the series of live recordings of the Chorus and Orchestra of Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, from EMI. The Petite Messe Solennelle is the largest composition Rossini completed after he had unexpectedly quit writing operas with Guillaume Tell thirty years earlier, and arguably the best. Its Kyrie movement, in particular, is original and affecting, something to be stacked against almost any other setting of the Latin Mass (perhaps due to his close study of the sacred works of J. S. Bach in this period), while Rossini turned to more stock operatic gestures, including aria-like pieces for soloists, in the longer movements. Rossini dutifully concludes both Gloria and Credo with double fugues for the "Cum sancto spiritu" and "Et vitam venturi saeculi" movements, which are more competent and effective than contrapuntal attempts by many other 19th-century composers. Both are regrettably capped off with what sounds like something from an opera buffa finale (in particular, the decision to top off the Creed movement with a final ecstatic "Credo!" approaches vulgarity).

This recording, led by the genial conductor Antonio Pappano, suffers from the same problems as the earlier recordings in the series with the same forces -- Guillaume Tell, the Verdi Requiem, and Rossini's Stabat Mater (which we reviewed live twice, by me in Siena and by Jens in Salzburg -- some mediocre instrumental sounds (in the opening phrases, for example), choral intonation issues (noticeable after unaccompanied passages, for example), and occasional lack of ensemble cohesion. This is not to mention the usual drawbacks of live recordings, like audience noises, minor blemishes in the performance, and Pappano's tendency to use audible breaths to give cues. The good part, and this is also true of most of Pappano's recordings, is that he once again works with a strong quartet of soloists, best in the middle, with fine solo contributions from mezzo-soprano Sara Mingardo and tenor Francesco Meli. Soprano Marina Rebeka sings well but does not have the sort of voice that one wants to luxuriate in during the odd soprano solo "O salutaris hostia," inserted before the Agnus Dei (in contrast to Mingardo, who owns the big solo passages in the Agnus Dei). The odd organ introduction to the Sanctus is here played nicely, but somewhat blandly, by Daniele Rossi.

Ionarts at Santa Fe: The Lady without a Lake

Joyce DiDonato (Elena) in La Donna del Lago, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera’s thrilling “Donna del Lago” proves the highlight of the summer
The Classical Review, August 2

It had to happen eventually, and it did.

After some disappointments earlier in the week, Thursday was a very good night to be at the Santa Fe Opera. The company’s debut production of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago turned out to be the high point of this summer’s season. In a charming, rustic production, directed by Paul Curran and shared with the Metropolitan Opera, a top-notch cast blew the roof off Crosby Theater with performances that were vocally and musically thrilling and dramatically compelling. The magnificent purple-hued vista of a stormy night in the New Mexico desert, complete with lightning flashes, is the sort of thing that only Santa Fe can offer.

[Continue reading]

Rossini, La Donna del Lago (critical edition of the score edited by H. Colin Slim)
Libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, premiered 24 October 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples
Based on Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
Santa Fe Opera

SEE ALSO:
Scott Cantrell, Vocal virtuosity in Santa Fe “La donna del lago” (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

George Loomis, La donna del lago, Santa Fe, New Mexico – review (Financial Times, August 1)

James M. Keller, Joyce DiDonato dazzles in La donna del lago (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 14)

Nathan Gunn Celebrity Recital

An opera star recital can be a wonderful thing, which is why Plácido Domingo established the Washington National Opera's Celebrity Series. One can present a first-tier singer, whom the company could probably never engage for a full production, and it brings in revenue with a minimum expenditure. It really only works when the singer is of the caliber to drive ticket sales -- in the last two seasons, Angela Gheorghiu, Bryn Terfel, and especially Juan Diego Flórez have fit that bill -- and when the music on the program is associated with the singer's best achievements. On neither account, really, did Sunday's Celebrity Recital by baritone Nathan Gunn succeed. We did not expect it to, which is why it did not appear among either our picks for the year or for the month of September, and the sparse audience -- padded with some listeners who did not behave like opera regulars -- showed that plenty of people agreed with our assessment. Having half of the selections consist of Broadway music by Sondheim and Loewe, I note with some sense of Schadenfreude, did not bring in the huge crowds of people wanting to hear opera singers sing music theater.

Gunn has been resting on his laurels for some time: his last solo performance to reach these ears, at Shriver Hall in 2008, fell just as flat as this uneven recital did. The voice, once mellifluous, sounded faded and gritty at times, and other than in the comic pieces, which obviously engaged him much more, he sang without much charm. The operatic roles he chose to feature seemed beyond his voice: Figaro's high notes in selections from The Barber of Seville at the edge of control and strained, the French in music from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers mostly incomprehensible (his Italian was better), and the toast aria from Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet a little skittish rhythmically and not uproarious in tone. More and more, Broadway musicals are taking over Gunn's schedule, including Francesca Zambello's Camelot at Glimmerglass next summer. He would not be the first singer to make that transition -- Ezio Pinza and Todd Duncan are a couple examples -- but it makes him far less interesting a performer for my money.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Verve and versatility at Washington National Opera’s concert series (Washington Post, September 25)

Gunn was outshone by his recital partner, tenor William Burden, who floated above Gunn in the famous duet "Au fond du temple saint" from The Pearl Fishers and showed up his French and his emotional connection to the audience in "Ah, lève-toi, soleil" from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (the only piece to elicit much cheering from the audience up to that point). Soprano Emily Albrink, who had an admirable WNO Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist outing as Sophie in last spring's Werther, did not sound quite as comfortable in this recital. A lack of breath support at the end of long lines dragged her intonation flat, but the top of her voice sounded just as effervescent and she was a charming Zerlina in "Là ci darem la mano" and Susanna in "Crudel, perchè fin'ora." Conductor Ted Sperling was obviously more comfortable in the music theater selections, but he kept himself largely out of the way in the overtures from Barber of Seville and Marriage of Figaro, pieces the WNO Orchestra could probably play in their sleep.

The lack of supertitles limited the audience's reactions to the funnier moments in the foreign-language pieces. It was good, however, to remember that this was how opera was before supertitles: either you understood the language or you relied on the singer's expressions and gestures to understand. This drew attention to Gunn's often emotion-less demeanor -- here there was no supertitle machine to deliver the punchline. The biggest laughs of the evening came from unplanned accidents, as when Gunn nimbly incorporated a loud audience sneeze into his performance of "Largo al factotum." The lighting system in the Kennedy Center Opera House went haywire before and during Gunn's performance of Goundod's Queen Mab aria, cycling through all of its color specials and spotlights, caused by a computer malfunction we were told by departing director of artistic operations Christina Scheppelmann (perhaps it was Queen Mab up to her usual tricks). After stopping mid-aria at the first incident, Gunn and the orchestra bravely soldiered on when it happened a second time, with some players using their mobile phones to light their standmates' music.

Operatic Threesome, Damrau Glitters in 'Ory'

This article was first published at The Classical Review on June 19, 2012.

Rossini, Le Comte Ory, J. D. Flórez, D. Damrau, J. DiDonato, Metropolitan Opera (production by Bartlett Sher), M. Benini (released on April 3, 2012) Virgin 0709599 3 | 153' Libretto (.PDF) Score

Rossini’s penultimate opera, Le Comte Ory, is the comic counterpart to his tragic masterpiece Guillaume Tell -- both were premiered within a year of each other, in 1828 and 1829, after which Rossini did not complete another opera for the remaining 40 years of his life.

He created Ory for the Académie Royale de Musique -- that is, the Opéra de Paris rather than the Opéra Comique -- but in spite of being very serious comedy, it has fallen into near-obscurity. The Metropolitan Opera, for example, had never performed the work until last year, in this production directed by Bartlett Sher, captured on video for the company’s HD simulcast to movie theaters and for transmission on PBS’s Great Performances series.

The slender libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson was based on their own play, a send-up of medieval farce, from a decade earlier, itself based on a collection of medieval ballads made by Pierre-Antoine de la Place in the 18th century, including a melody quoted by Rossini in the opera. Rossini reused a good portion of his score for Il Viaggio a Reims, an occasional piece created for the coronation of Charles X and never published after a few performances in Paris. The music that Rossini added, however, is some of his most charming, leading Liszt, who sponsored a production in Weimar in 1850, to call it “the champagne opera.”

It is the music one remembers, like the Act I finale, an unaccompanied ensemble for 14 voices, described by scholar Richard Osborne as “music in the Italian church style -- using an a cappella church ensemble to celebrate not some Christian rite but rather the unfrocking of an imposter priest is rather a nice joke.”

The story opposes two seducers, a libertine count and his amorous page -- a replay of the Count and Cherubino from Le nozze di Figaro -- both of whom are in love with a countess who has sworn not to take a lover. The Count disguises himself, first as a holy hermit and then as a woman on pilgrimage (not actually a nun, in spite of the way it is staged here), to worm his way into the locked Castle of Formoutiers and its bevy of beautiful women, all waiting faithfully for their husbands to return from the Crusades. The page, Isolier (a trouser role), helps Ory’s tutor, who has been searching for his wayward charge, find him and foil his plan, but not before Ory finds his way into the countess’s bed, only to find a surprise there in the form of his own page who has preceded him (the splendid trio ‘A la faveur de cette nuit obscure’) – a man dressed as a woman seducing a woman in bed with a man played by a woman, if you are keeping score.

The principal attraction of this staging is what the French call a distribution d’enfer, with three knockout singers in the three leads, the sort of combination one usually finds only at celebrity gala concerts. The cast is led without a doubt by soprano Diana Damrau, who gives a blockbuster performance as La Comtesse Adèle, with flawless coloratura technique in the showstopping ‘En proie à la tristesse’ in Act I, ending on a blistering high E flat. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is boyish and charming as Isolier, with equally fine fioriture and some fiery high notes of her own.

Few tenors working today are as accomplished in the Rossini operas as Juan Diego Flórez, and he plays Ory with a devilish wink, a striking ease and agility in difficult melismatic passages, and ringing high notes – the role has a number of high Cs and Ds. That he made it onto the stage at all that day was something of a miracle: as it was widely reported, he was with his wife, who was giving birth to their first child at their apartment only a little over a half-hour before curtain up.

Shortcomings are due mostly to the staging by Bartlett Sher, which tries a little too hard, setting the action in a 19th-century theater rather than in the Middle Ages. Looking for an intimacy hard to achieve in the cavernous theater of the Metropolitan Opera, the sets (designed by Michael Yeargan) reduce the stage space, putting the playing space on a little platform, with many old-school effects viewed in the ‘off stage’ space and interfering with the action.

The theatrical mise en abyme technique -- a performance within the performance -- is now so common in operatic productions that it is becoming a little tired. The effect is made worse by the manner of the Met HD simulcasts, which invade the backstage and, while showing an often unseen side of how an opera is staged also puncture the aura of mystery, because they present opera in a way it is not meant to be seen.

The cinematic close-up makes sense in film and even theater, when the main form of emotional communication is through subtlety of facial expression, but not in opera, where it is supposed to be about singing and music seen and heard from a distance. The Met camera (video directed by Gary Halvorson) focuses in far too much on individuals, and often the wrong ones.

For example, we get glimpses of a supernumerary character, a sort of stage manager for the little show within a show, whom we see manipulating little bird puppets around the singers and, at times, mugging directly at the viewer through the camera. For a Flórez high note in the Count’s opening cavatina, the camera pans upward awkwardly to catch the same servant wagging the birds above the singer’s head, which utterly deflates the excitement of hearing the note sung. The camera also catches members of the chorus mugging, looking vacant, darting a glimpse at the conductor – all things one is not meant to see, and almost certainly would not see from a seat in the house.

Perhaps unfortunately, the DVD keeps some of the feel and format of the HD broadcasts, opening with the introduction by host Renée Fleming, while most of the intermission interviews are kept for a bonus section on the second DVD. The interview features, where the host catches one or more of the singers right after the last note of the finale, are often uncomfortable. The best outcome is to spoil the musical effect, when you just want to be with your memory of the last notes and not have the illusion burst by seeing the singer rather than the character. The worst is embarrassment for the singe.

Other elements are out of place, too. In the supporting cast, Suzanne Resmark’s tone was a little off-color and under pitch as the Comtesse’s servant, Ragonde; Michele Pertusi rushed through some of the fast passages as the Gouverneur; but Stéphane Degout had a patter-quick turn as the count’s servant, Raimbaud. At the podium, Maurizio Benini was far from stellar, too matter of fact, and the performance suffered from some of the coordination issues that Anne Midgette and other critics noted on opening night, still there two weeks into the run.

The switch of focus one can discern at the Met, away from musical concerns to visual ones, is evident not only in the way the production was realized and filmed but in the choice of score: as Alex Ross pointed out, the performance did not take advantage of the new critical edition of this opera, which restores some of the portions of the two finales cut for later revivals. Then again, neither does this DVD’s main competition, a DVD from Glyndebourne, from a performance in 1997 with Annick Massis, Marc Laho, and Diana Montague.

SEE ALSO:
Glyndebourne production

Alex Ross, Le Comte Ory; or, missed opportunities (The Rest Is Noise, March 26, 2011)

Anne Midgette, Fizzy “Ory” at Met Opera charms its public (The Classical Beat, March 26, 2011)

Richard K. Fitzgerald, Frolics and Frippery: A Roll in the Hay with Rossini (Ionarts, July 22, 2006)

Anthony Tommasini, With Rossini’s Mix of This and That, the Met Finds an Excuse for a Romp (New York Times, March 25, 2011)

Peter Gelb, Theatrical Nuance on a Grand Scale (New York Times, March 25, 2011) -- an "advertorial" as Anne Midgette put in, run by the paper on the same day as its own review of the production

Happy 53rd Birthday, Rossini

Fifty-three is no age for a composer and so it is little wonder that Rossini - or at least his music - is alive and well. Born on February 29th, 1792, Gioachino Antonio Rossini soon discovered a penchant and talent in culinary appreciation as well as note-churning. The latter he put to use for the creation of almost 40 operas, the former to support his stately appearance.

So much has been written about Rossini, that I would not likely contribute anything new on this special Rossini-day - so instead I list below all that has been written about Rossini on Ionarts over the last few years.

Except, before I do that, I still want to rehash some reasonably well known stories about Rossini, just because they are too good to pass up on - and because they endear the composer to me, if not always his music.

There is, of course, the story that when Rossini laid on bed composing and he dropped a sheet of freshly written music, rather than making the effort to climb off the bed and pick it up, he simply wrote the music out, again. Consider this - and that tiny little Rossini's daycare consisted of a pork butchery, where he got to watch the production of sausages - and listen to his music carefully...

The most enduring story about Rossini may well be his admission to having cried only three times in his life: Once after his first opera (La cambiale di matrimonio) had a disastrous premiere. Then again when he heard Paganini play. And finally when he witnessed a truffle-stuffed turkey fall overboard in a picnic boating accident. (Sharp tongues might point out that Rossini would have known all about turkeys, but that's just not a nice thing to say on such a rare birthday.)


Rossini on ionarts:

Briefly Noted: Julia Lezhneva

CD Review, Rossini Arias
CTD, October 6th, 2011

Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 9 )

Concert Review, Stabat Mater
jfl, August 15th, 2011

8½ Turks in Italy at Wolf Trap Opera

Opera Review, Il Turco...
CTD, July 14th, 2010

'Cinderella' Not a Dream Come True

Opera Review
Sophia Vastek, September 28th, 2009

'Barber of Seville' as Cartoon, and Not with Bugs Bunny

Opera Review
CTD, September 15th, 2009

Wall of Horns (Munich Opera Festival 2008)

Concert Review, Works for Horn Octet
jfl, August 19th, 2008

Washington Concert Opera: Bianca e Falliero

Opera Review
CTD, April 15th, 2008

Opera on DVD: Il Viaggio a Reims

DVD Review
CTD, November 27th, 2007

Ionarts in Siena: Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Stabat mater dolorosa, 64th Settimana Musicale Senese, Siena
CTD, July 16th, 2007

Rossini's Otello, Washington Concert Opera

WCO
Sonya Harway, May 1st, 2007

Flórez's Breakthrough

CD Review, Matilde di Shabran
CTD, February 28th, 2007

Two Comedies of Errors

Il Viaggio a Reims, Kirov Opera, Kennedy Center, Washington
jfl, February 4th, 2007

Siege of Baltimore

L'Assedio di Corinta, Baltimore Lyric Opera
CTD, October 16th, 2006

Frolics and Frippery: A Roll in the Hay with Rossini

Le Comte Ory, Wolftrap
Richard K. Fitzgerarld, July 22nd, 2006

Summer Opera 2006: "Barber of Seville" in St. Louis

Preview - Barber of Seville, St.Louis
CTD, June 23rd, 2006

Il Viaggio a St. Petersburg

Il Viaggio a Reims, Kirov Opera, Mariinksy Theater, St.Petersburg
Oksana Khadarina, May 30th, 2006

Let's Do Silly Things in Algeria

L'Italiana in Algeri, Washington National Opera
jfl, May 16th, 2006

Tancredi: Sounds Good

Tancredi, Washington Concert Opera
jfl, April 6th, 2006

Summer Opera: La Cenerentola at Wolf Trap

La Cenerentola, Wolf Trap
CTD, August 21st, 2005

Summer Opera: Barber of Seville in Santa Fe

Barber of Seville, Santa Fe
CTD, July 23rd, 2005

Even Google celebrates Rossini today:

Guillaume Tell

This article was first published at The Classical Review on October 14, 2011.

Rossini, Guillaume Tell, G. Finley, J. Osborn, M.-N. Lemieux, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, A. Pappano (released on August 9, 2011) EMI 0 28826 2 | 208'15"

Antonio Pappano is a reliably good conductor, but some of his work, like the Verdi Requiem he recorded with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia recently, lacks that last bit of unexpected fire to make it truly great. His new recording with the same orchestra of Rossini’s mammoth opera Guillaume Tell falls into the same category. It is a beautiful recording in many ways, showing off the virtues of this unwieldy but worthwhile opera, but it does not quite reach the mark of being indispensable.

In a fine essay for a handsomely presented booklet (which includes libretto and translations) Pappano says that Guillaume Tell was put on his plate when he took the reins of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. This three-CD set claims to be the first recording to use the critical edition of the opera by the late M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet, made for the Pesaro Edition of the complete works of Rossini and published in 1992.

Bartlet’s edition is preferable to the score published in the 19th century, which was made before the work was actually performed. In the course of preparing the opera for public performance, Rossini customarily made many changes that were recorded only in orchestral parts and other archival sources in Paris, and which Bartlet compiled painstakingly to create a definitive version of the opera that was actually premiered by Rossini in 1829.

As scholar Philip Gossett has noted, in his book Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, Riccardo Muti used an advance copy of Bartlet’s edition for his 1988 production of the opera at La Scala: regrettably, that performance was not done in the original French but with a retrofitted Italian translation of the libretto (an otherwise excellent version, it was released on both CD, on the Phillips label, and on an Opus Arte DVD).

Antonio Pappano, who also conducted a concert performance of the work at the BBC Proms in London this summer, uses the French text but, just as oddly, cuts some of the pieces in the Bartlet edition to fit the opera onto three discs. Without the “authentic” argument in its favor, Pappano’s version cannot quite supplant the leading contender for the most desirable French version of the opera, with Lamberto Gardelli leading the Royal Philharmonic, recently re-released by EMI. It is complete on four CDs (albeit not in the scholarly edition) and has a better cast (among others, Gabriel Bacquier, Montserrat Caballé, and Nicolai Gedda -- the last has to be heard to be believed) and studio recording quality (Pappano’s version was recorded live in concert in the Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, with the crowd noises and hasty page turning sounds that entails).

Little argument needs to be made about the value of the work itself: it has its longueurs, yes, but for its melodic beauty and dramatic qualities, it is a work to be savored, musically, all the more so because its composer went almost completely silent after it for the remaining 40 years of his life. The libretto by Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis takes up most of the story of the legendary William Tell, a (probably fictional) crossbow maker and marksman who defied his Austrian overlords and sparked the movement toward an independent Swiss confederacy.

More than Schiller’s famous play, the opera draws on a strikingly similar earlier French libretto for André Grétry’s 1791 version of the story, which was itself based on a French play by Antoine-Marin Lemierre. The most famous episode of the legend, Tell being forced by the Austrians to shoot an apple placed on the head of his young son, Jemmy (spoofed by Pappano in his photograph on this set’s cover, with a baton-pierced apple on his head), is reserved until the Third Act, followed by Tell’s escape when he is asked to pilot the ship taking him to prison and the second crossbow shot, which kills Gesler, the oppressive Austrian leader. Along the way, there is a love story involving Tell’s friend Arnold, who has fallen in love with an Austrian princess named Mathilde.

Leading the cast is the heroic, youthful Arnold of John Osborn, not only surviving this punishing role but giving its numerous very high notes force and beauty, albeit with some Iowa-inflected French pronunciation. Gerald Finley’s Tell feels just a little forced, leading to some unpleasant nasality and strained intonation, but overall a good performance. Many of the best scenes are ensembles, like the sequence of numbers in the crossbow shot scene, with the not-so-boyish (but pretty) soprano of Elena Xanthoudakis as Tell’s son, Jemmy, rising bravely over the other voices.

Soprano Malin Byström has a thick, almost mezzo-like sound as Mathilde, and the Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux brings a warm strength to the supporting role of Tell’s wife, Hedwige. The many choruses and dance scenes are among the most pleasing music, and Pappano leads most of them with grace, although it sounds like sections of the chorus, not always in tune, have been pushed to the background in the engineering of the sound.

The orchestra plays well, in general, with especially fine cello solos in the opening section of the extended overture and in the crucial aria for Tell, ‘Sois immobile’, where he bids his son to stay still during the crossbow shot.

Briefly Noted: Julia Lezhneva

Rossini, Arias, J. Lezhneva, Sinfonia Varsovia, Warsaw Chamber Opera Choir, M. Minkowski (released on April 26, 2011) Naïve V 5221 | 58'

Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva got quite a launch for a singer in her early 20s, mentored by beloved soprano Kiri Te Kanawa and conductor Mark Minkowski. We first heard her in the fine ensemble of singers put together by Minkowski for his recording of the Bach B minor Mass, although without really making mention of her. Earlier this year, Alex Ross picked her recording of Vivaldi's Ottone in villa as his CD of the week (The Rest Is Noise, January 15), singling out Lezhneva for particular praise (a recording we plan to review soon). Lezhneva was given the unusual chance at a solo album, made once again with Minkowski, this time in Poland, a set of full-length Rossini show-stoppers that has received lots of comments, including Derek Greten-Harrison (Julia Lezhneva: "Rossini", August 2011) in Opera News, Chris Mullins (Julia Lezhneva sings Rossini, August 14) in Opera Today, and Richard Wigmore (Rossini - Arias) in Gramophone. Indeed, for someone so young and largely untried -- Lezhneva had her stage debut just this past summer, in a production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots at La Monnaie in Brussels, once again under Minkowski's baton -- she makes a beautiful sound. The voice is pleasing across a rather broad range, including some forays into the chest voice, the intonation is mostly clean (even on the staccato notes in Tanti affetti for example), and the agility is remarkable (albeit a little "notey" in runs, with little aspirations on each note). There is room to grow, but as a debut solo disc, it is quite an achievement.

Notes from the 2011 Salzburg Festival ( 9 )

Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Hints of stardom—if only among the singing personnel—were on display at the Grosses Festspielhaus during the performance of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of Italy’s first and arguably best (not that that means much) purely orchestral orchestra. I wasn’t impressed when I had last heard them at their home, Renzo Piano’s gorgeous if acoustically limited Sala Santa Cecilia (under Marek Janowski), and I wasn’t impressed now, with their chief conductor, Antonia Pappano, eliciting little more than world-class mediocrity. The singing was done by Anna Netrebko, Marianna Pizzolato, Matthew Polenzani, and Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, and it was done to Rossini’s Stabat Mater.

G.Rossini, Stabat Mater, Pappano / Santa Cecilia / Netrebko, DiDonato, Brownlee, D'Arcangelo EMI

Polenzani sang with very fine, unspectacular voice, vibrato heavy but well judged, playing up the dramatic (or ‘profane’) aspects of this perfectly profane Stabat mater—which made it sound like a bit from Bizet’s Carmen. D’Arcangelo has been heard in worse shape, but securely though he barked out low notes, they came with a pouty, tired-sounding voice with only hints of once-magnificence. Netrebko, looking great on stage with a good bit of extra weight filling out her considerable frame, sang with her beautiful, one dimensional, mono-centered direct voice and with particular urgency in the “Inflammatus” left few desires unfulfilled. I fond mezzo Marianna Pizzolato most convincing, with her strong, malleable voice with fine heights and neatly growling bottom notes—she too, as Polenzani, on the dramatic side of the expressive spectrum.

The music itself, constantly interrupted by cell phones (including the bronze-tanned, artificial fingernail-ed Italian critic’s next to me), has beautiful moments… and lots of banality and phrases either copied (Schubert’s Winterreise) or reminiscent of Italian ditties the names of which escape me. The 1863 Petite Messe Solennelle from almost thirty years later offers considerably more enjoyment to these ears. Pappano delivered a performance, though not itself entirely at fault, suited to make the listener feel considerable warmth toward the work’s numerous, often harsh, critics. Trombones (and trumpets) made a lot of noise, but not much beyond that.

Before that came Haydn. There are 103 (technically 105) other Symphonies of Joseph Haydn to chose from, but it was No.104, the “London” Symphony, that made the cut. I’d quibble with the lack of imagination to always revert to this, or one of the other ‘London Symphonies’, when doing Haydn, except I should be (and am) happy to have any Haydn at all at a concert with a regular sized, non-HIP orchestra.

Marred by errant entries, lugubrious sounding strings—shrill above forte—but played with sweet abandon, the first movement was a jovial mess that somehow got a lot of Haydn spirit right… perhaps precisely because of the air of taking nothing too serious and just enjoying the moment. The three next movements, unfortunately, were considerably more casual and unwittingly lulling.

Photo courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Silvia Lelli