Notes from the 2025 Bayreuth Festival: Camping Masterclass and Macbeth at the Foot of the Green Hill

Also published in Die Presse: Partystimmung bei „Macbeth“

Wagner-Light – and not even that much Wagner

The free-to-all Open-Air Festival Opener is a welcome opportunity to combine Green Hill Flair and camping gear.

The 149th Bayreuth Festival has opened, but eyes are already fixed on next year: 150 years of Bayreuth – though, strictly speaking, only the 113th actual Festival season (39 pre-, 74 post-1951). The grand plan? All ten canonical Bayreuth operas plus, for the first time on the Green Hill, Rienzi. Reality and the treasurer had other ideas. So now the plan is a bit more modest if still unique, thanks to Rienzi.

Is that a good thing? Bayreuth doesn’t have to offer “unique” – it is unique. Tradition, simply by being tradition, has value. In fact, that’s Bayreuth’s main draw. Yes, tradition is constantly subverted here (which is itself part of the tradition)– but the frame of tradition ought to be handled carefully. If the festival were to start putting Meyerbeer on the Bayreuth stage (as people sometimes – unwisely, inexplicably – suggest they do), it’d be the first step toward the festival losing the plot and surrendering to the arbitrary. Opening the Festspielhaus to Rienzi, meanwhile, does no harm nor need it be the ledge of a slippery slope. Incidentally, the staging is meant to be a one-off, performed nine times, before being passed on to other opera houses.

That the team of Magdolna Parditka and Alexandra Szemeredy orients its production more along the lines of Wieland Wagner’s 1957 Stuttgart Rienzi and the 1939 Karlsruhe version of the score, rather than attempting some Frankensteinian “complete” version, is heartening. That the other production will be a so-called “AI Ring”, visually drawing on all previous Ring-productions and fed by cues from the ‘staging’ (as opposed to “directorial”) team, can faze no true Wagnerian, especially with Thielemann conducting. Granted, it sounds like it will be more likely “interesting” than “good” but worst case: close your eyes and perk the ears. A lesson learned from Jay Scheib’s Augmented Reality Parsifal.

Back to the present: the third Festival Open Air served as a warm-up act. The Festival Orchestra, “almost voluntarily,” took to the stage for this open-access concert at the foot of the Green Hill – right between the stage and the VIP zone/champagne tent. A few trees are in the way (nothing a generously ambitious axe couldn’t solve in the coming years), but people adapt. The crowd? Plenty of youth, musicians’ families, locals, and some early-arriving festival-goers. Cherry tomatoes, cubes of cheese, bottles of Kulmbacher beer, and glasses of Aperol were the currency of the evening. Territorial skirmishes – already two hours before the concert – were managed politely, amid a display of Germany’s native talents for camping, picnicking, and spontaneous order.

Atmosphere was everything – as it should be. The acoustics? Well, like at similar open-air festival in Schönbrunn, Munich’s Odeonsplatz, Berlin’s Waldbühne: decent under the circumstances, but only loosely related to actual concert music. To pretend otherwise would be silly, just as it would be pointless to measure such an event by the standards of a concert-hall performance. Pablo Heras-Casado, this year’s conductor of the Parsifal , kept the mood lively. Gershwin’s Girl Crazy overture brought out a “SummerStage-in-Central-Park” vibe. Beethoven’s Fifth (the first movement) thundered along with delightful furiosity. That the strings struggled a little with the evening’s humidity could be overlooked – the important thing was the oomph.

Three excerpts from Verdi’s Macbeth fit the Meistersingerian festival motto (“Wahn, überall Wahn”) – though the work isn’t exactly most people’s idea of open-air party-time. For that, Johann Strauss’ Thunder and Lightning Polka (“ Unter Donner und Blitz was far better suited: an encore gratefully seized upon by an audience whose joints, after four hours of sitting on the ground, were celebrating their own 150th anniversary. “Next year, better bring a chair,” advised a nearby, seated lady from her enviably comfy-looking camping gear – in a tone part helpful, part pitying. You live and you learn.
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Dip Your Ears: No. 265 (Muti’s 1981 Verdi Requiem)

G.Verdi, Missa da Requiem R.Muti / BRSO BR Klassik

Riccardo Muti’s Star-Studded 1981 Verdi Requiem

Bewildering Muti

Riccardo Muti is as Janus-faced a conductor as I know. His best is the best, his worst the worst. He can blow the roof off with one type of repertoire and he can bore the life out of every note with another. Groping through his discography and sitting through enough of his concerts, I’ve come up with the following theorems: Younger Muti is marginally more interesting than older Muti, but if that’s the case, it’s completely overshadowed by the differences in repertoire. Great repertoire includes: Anything post-romantic Russian is great. Think Prokofiev and Scriabin, where his symphonic recordings are still unsurpassed. Almost anything Italian, too, but especially these: Cherubini, which he lovingly tends to. Nino Rota, his mentor, whom he champions. Verdi, whom – softly and fiery – he knows inside out. And Respighi, where he over-the-tops it to jaw-dropping effect. So-so repertoire: Everything else. Atrocious: Bruckner, Schubert.

On-Paper Excellence

This view colors my expectations, which isn’t always aiding a reasonably objective opinion, but it’s not clear in which direction. Will I necessarily like that which I assume to be great and loathe what I expect to be junk? Or will I have too-high expectations disappointed in the former case and very low expectations exceeded in the latter? So much to think about and I haven’t even put BR Klassik’s new release of a 1981 live recording of Muti conducting the Verdi Requiem into the CD tray yet. Well, it really is the corker that it promises to be. The soloists Jessye Norman, Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras, and Yevgeny Nesterenko promise and deliver. Baltsa isn’t the smokiest, haunting alto (as, say, Ekaterina Semenchuk), but gorgeous and at the height of her powers. José Carreras has the mellifluous lightness that lets him navigate his tricky part without the embarrassing slurs and wails that so often undo this work. Norman plows through the score with aplomb but also creamy finesse. And Nesterenko, who passed away last year, doesn’t rumble in the basement but adds a welcome lyrical quality to the proceedings. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra plays with the perfection that was already then its hallmark (delicate string whispers, turn-on-a-dime dynamic changes) but also lets itself be whipped into an absolute frenzy by Muti, as is true for the BR Chorus, who Muti audibly loves working with. His take is dramatic rather than sulfurous, deliberately powerful rather than violently thrusting but crucially: never Zeffirelli-harmless. I am in theory partial towards darker, brisker, more biting readings, but not only do I not know any half-way flawless recordings in that vein, Muti also just convinces on sheer quality and decibels. And there is nothing about the event being live that detracts from the sonic experience.

Compared to what?

The whole thing is a top-notch recording, every bit as good or – thanks to Norman – actually better than his 1979 EMI/Warner take (Scotto, Baltsa, Luchetti, Nesterenko) and much more moving than the grand, self-conscious, stilted 1987 effort (EMI, Studer, Zajic, Pavarotti, Ramey). His latest recording, from Chicago (CSO-Resound, Frittoli, Borodina, Zeffiri, Abdrazakov) packs a punch but is let down by the high voices. Most Verdi Requiem recordings have some flaw or another that one has to overlook for true enjoyment. This leaves some very old accounts still among my favorites, starting with bracing Leinsdorf (oop) and Fricsay by way of Solti II, Gardiner’s HIP take, and, most recently Barenboim: another good slow-burn reading but let down by the male soloists. (I haven’t listened to Noseda’s LSO discyet; his Verdi Requiems live, however, have been splendid.) In short: Listen to it!

10/9

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On ClassicsToday: A Lady Macbeth From Hell

A Lady Macbeth From Hell

by Jens F. Laurson

The idea of Verdi’s Macbeth (in the original, dramatically taut 1847 version) performed by a period instrument ensemble is, generously viewed, intriguing–at least when Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi are involved, with all their creditable expertise in Italian music. Granted, Verdi is not Vivaldi and... Continue Reading [Insider Content]

New York City Ballet celebrates Robbins and Bernstein

New York City Ballet in Jerome Robbins's Glass Pieces (photo by Paul Kolnik)
Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein were both born in 1918, the former on October 11 and the latter on August 25. After a program honoring three of its major choreographers earlier in the week, the New York City Ballet offered a tribute to Robbins, its other co-founder, and the composer with whom he often collaborated, seen on Friday night in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Robbins is most remembered for his hybridization of classical ballet with popular dance, a trend he began in his very first choreography, Fancy Free. Premiered in 1944 by the company that would become American Ballet Theater, it is set to a jazz-heavy score by Bernstein, in a foretaste of what they would create a decade later in West Side Story. The scene is wartime Manhattan, evoked immediately by the "overture," a minute or so of a recording of Big Stuff, a Bernstein original that sounds like a classic blues. NYCB's new music director, Andrew Litton, has changed the recording used at this moment to one made by Billie Holiday, the voice envisioned by both Bernstein and Robbins, although she had obviously not recorded the song at the time of the ballet's creation.

Roman Mejia, Harrison Coll, and Sebastian Villarini-Velez, the Saturday matinee's trio of sailors in a last-minute substitution, burst onto the stage one by one with cartwheels. The opening music, bubbling with enthusiasm, contains the kernel of the melody of "New York, New York, it's a helluva town" (the Bronx is up and the Battery's down, the people ride in a hole in the ground), from the musical adaptation of this ballet, On the Town. This trio was enthusiastic and physical, if not always as unified as they might have been. The style of choreography must have been bracing to see in 1944, still some years before Gene Kelly would popularize the style in countless big-production film musicals. It now feels rather dated, however, especially the interactions of the sailors with the three Passers-by, women who are minding their own business and end up basically getting harassed.

Other Reviews: Alastair Macaulay, Then, With a Touch of Now, and a Fully Charged Prodigal Son (New York Times, January 21, 2008) Brian Seibert, A Jerome Robbins Tribute by New York City Ballet Brims With Brio (New York Times, February 9, 2015)

The Robbins legacy came off the strongest in the first work, Glass Pieces, from 1983. Lucinda Childs had already choreographed Glass's music at that point, in Einstein on the Beach and Dance, but Robbins captured something essential about Glass's style in these excerpts from Glassworks and Akhnaten. In the opening scene (see photo above) the corps walks about busily, like the bustling city streets slowed down in the film Koyaanisqatsi, which came out just before this ballet.

Pairings and small groups of dancers in solid colors enter the scene accompanied by new musical motifs, disrupting the workaday mood with lyricism. Eventually the corps is drawn into what they are doing, a sort of metaphor for artistic inspiration. The choreography is most ravishing, however, in the slow movement, set to the "Facades" movement of Glassworks, with a gorgeous pas de deux, spotlit in front of a sort of conga-line corps silhouetted in blue light. The exceptionally strong new principal dancer Russell Janzen elegantly lifted the long-limbed Maria Kowrowski around the stage to the held, hovering notes of the soprano sax solo. The final scene, with its percussion-heavy syncopated elements, did not reveal the men of the corps in the strongest light. Conductor Andrews Sill had some trouble at times keeping musicians on opposite sides of the pit perfectly aligned in this complex, repetitive music.

The eccentric side of Robbins came across in the last piece, The Four Seasons from 1979. It is principally a choreography for the ballet of that name in the third act of Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes, augmented by some music from the same composer's I Lombardi and Il Trovatore. The staging and costumes, with caped dancers in front of a huge, soaring crest bearing Verdi's name, seemed extremely kitschy by comparison to the week's worth of bare stages. Robbins made many jokes that matched music to movement, like the shivering ballerinas in the Winter scene. Outstanding solo work came from the poised Sarah Mearns, with an elegant, upright vertical line in the Spring section, paired beautifully with Jared Angle. Ashley Laracey was again extraordinary in the lead role of Summer, even in this least striking of the four scenes, and Ashley Bouder and Joaquin de Luz excelled in the wine-dipped concluding dances of Fall, watched over by the athletic caprioles of Daniel Ulbricht.

This program will be repeated today at 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Opera House with various casts.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Angela Meade

The Festival of Song series from Performance Santa Fe continued on Sunday afternoon. Although she is not featured on the Santa Fe Opera season this summer, soprano Angela Meade is in town, and her recital at the Santa Fe Scottish Rite Center was an affair not to be missed. Since Meade is not singing opera here this year, series director and accompanist Joe Illick allowed as how she could sing some opera arias along with the art songs.

Meade's is not a voice naturally suited to the more rarefied demands of art song. Two simple and slow songs by Bellini, Vaga luna and Ma rendi pur contento, were pretty but bordering on nondescript. In other cases, like Strauss's Zueignung, she just did not need the sort of vocal power applied to the music. These were only minor flaws in what was an intense, almost overwhelming recital that reinforced the preeminence of this extraordinarily gifted soprano. Meade brought subtlety to Liszt's song Oh! quand je dors, with a pearly control of her diminuendo and a longing turn of phrase in the memorable final phrase. At the keyboard Illick was right on the money in following Meade's twists and turns of rubato, and his left hand provided plenty of dynamic drive in larger songs like Liszt's Enfant, si j'étais roi.

In songs and especially opera arias where more squillo was needed, Meade excelled, the power of her voice and plenteous breath support like a thrilling electric surge. The restlessness of Strauss's Cäcilie, the soaring high parts of Korngold's Mariettas Lied, the soaring conclusion of Strauss's Zueignung -- all hit the right mark. When composers drew on the strengths of a voice like hers, it was the best of all, as in the intense crescendo and diminuendo at the opening of Pace, pace, mio Dio, from Verdi's La forza del destino, and especially the shrieked curses at the end of that piece ("Maledizione!"). Ebben?...Ne andrò lontana from Catalani's La Wally, music used to such memorable effect in Jean-Jacques Beineix's crazy 80s film Diva, made for an equally exciting conclusion. Most sopranos who sing Victor Herbert's Art Is Calling for Me (I Want to Be a Prima Donna) as an encore would get an Ionarts Eye-Roll Award, but Meade has earned it.

The next concert in the Festival of Song series will feature soprano Leah Crocetto (August 4, 4 pm), sadly after my departure from Santa Fe.

Forbes Classical CD of the Week

…Riccardo Muti’s Otello, his first commercial audio recording of Verdi’s far-and-away greatest opera, hasn’t got an all-star cast by name but hand-picked singers instead, who contribute to one of the most wholly satisfying performances of the opera I’ve heard on record…

-> Classical CD of the Week: Serenading The Green Eyed Monster

Read more »

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Daughter of the Regiment' / 'Rigoletto'

Bruce Sledge (Duke of Mantua) and chorus in Rigoletto, Santa Fe Opea (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, A sensational “Rigoletto” debut and uneven “La fille” at Santa Fe Opera (The Classical Review, August 5)

For one of its standard repertoire pieces this season, Santa Fe Opera has returned to Verdi’s Rigoletto for the first time since 2000, heard on Tuesday night. With a libretto drawn from Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse, Verdi manages to make the two male lead characters, the title jester and the Duke of Mantua sympathetic, even when they are largely repulsive...

[Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, Santa Fe Opera Offers ‘The Daughter of the Regiment,’ ‘Rigoletto’ and ‘Salome’ (New York Times, August 7)

Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe’s ‘Rigoletto’ a feast for the ears, but not the eyes (Dallas Morning News, August 5)

John Stege, Napoleonic Tomfoolery: Getting regimented at the Opera (Santa Fe Reporter, July 8)

---, Voices, Voices, Voices: This Rigoletto’s a contender (Santa Fe Reporter, July 15)

James M. Keller, Season opens with Donizetti's ‘Daughter of the Regiment’ (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 4)

---, A dark and stormy night at SFO’s Rigoletto (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 5)

'Aida' at Wolf Trap

Scott Hendricks, Marjorie Owens, and Michelle DeYoung in Aida, Wolf Trap Opera, 2015 (photo by Kim Witman)
You give birth to children, and you raise them with such care, keeping them safe and guarding their every step, until they grow up and become their own people. And after all that, can they even be bothered to call or visit once in a while? One can imagine the maternal guilt trip that Wolf Trap Opera could lay on the many singers launched by its young artist program over the years. Every once in a while, one of the kids comes home to visit, as Alan Held did in 2006, but the concert performance of Verdi's Aida on Friday night in the Filene Center, featuring four of the company's distinguished alumni, will hopefully become a tradition. In other words, all you distinguished Wolf Trap Alumni, be good and come home to see your mother once in a while.

Verdi, Aida, M. Caballé, P. Domingo, New Philharmonia Orchestra, R. Muti

Aida is the grandest of grand operas, produced at the Metropolitan Opera, where it has had immense popularity (second only to La Bohème), in the most extravagant pomp over the years. However, it works just as well in small-scale productions -- like that seen at Glimmerglass in 2012 (with significant reservations) and at Virginia Opera in 2011 -- and when you have a strong cast like this one, it can be devastating even without any sets or costumes. The only problem, as is always the case in Wolf Trap's cavernous outdoor venue, was the amplification. A few seconds of no amplification made it clear that you cannot do without it, but problems with the microphone levels made the situation worse: singers on the left side of the stage were heard much more clearly after intermission than in the first half.

The four lead singers, all graduates of the Wolf Trap apprentice program, have made strong impressions in Washington in recent years. Soprano Marjorie Owens could project over the huge ensembles but also sing with delicate pianissimo at crucial points for the role ("Numi, pietà" and "O patria mia"). In those exquisite moments of Verdi soprano suffering, as the libretto puts it, Owens's pain was indeed sacred ("il suo dolor mi è sacro," as Amneris puts it), something meant for delectation. Tenor Carl Tanner was a brilliant, heroic Radamès, not a singer known necessarily for subtlety (no mincing about with the final B-flat of Celeste Aida, for example), but with enough forza to match Owens step for step. Baritone Scott Hendricks played Amonasro with savage snarl, chewing the non-existent scenery with his over-acting but leaving no doubt as to the character's passion.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Wolf Trap Opera brings back alumni for big-gun ‘Aida’ (Washington Post, July 27) Emily Cary, ‘Aida’ tenor Carl Tanner returns to D.C., where he started trucking and bounty hunting careers (Washington Times, July 22)

No one, however, matched the intensity of mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, whose Amneris was fawning, venomous, deceitful, and yet ultimately sympathetic, someone who pays dearly for loving too deeply. When the microphone level was adjusted in the second half, it brought her searing voice into sharp focus, and it was guilty fun watching her exult in Aida's pain. Current members of the young artists program filled out the cast quite nicely, Evan Boyer as Ramfis, Christian Zaremba as the Egyptian king, and Kerriann Otaño as the high priestess (the last two heard to good effect in the company's Marriage of Figaro last month).

Conductor Daniele Callegari led a strong performance at the podium of the National Symphony Orchestra, with lovely divisi strings in the introduction to Act I and strong solos from oboe and clarinet. Four trumpeters came out to the edge of the stage, with long ceremonial trumpets, for the famous triumphal march, which was a nice touch. Members of Julian Wachner's Washington Chorus were well prepared for the choral parts of the score, both suave and bombastic. The weather had turned out cool and dry, so it was surprising not to see the lawn seating full of wine-sipping spectators.

The National Symphony Orchestra and Wolf Trap Opera will be back for one more performance this summer, a staging of Puccini's Madama Butterfly (August 7), in the Filene Center.

Lawrence Brownlee @ Vocal Arts

Virtuoso Rossini Arias, L. Brownlee, Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra, C. Orbelian (Delos, 2014) Spiritual Sketches, L. Brownlee, D. Sneed (2013)

It is always good when Lawrence Brownlee is back in town. The American tenor has been featured in these pages many times before, at Wolf Trap, where he got his start, Washington National Opera, Vocal Arts Society, Washington Concert Opera (and in 2006), and as winner of the Marian Anderson Award. Since we first started writing about him, he has become an international star, most deservedly, just closing out the Metropolitan Opera season, for example, in I Puritani. In accordance with that prominence, perhaps, Vocal Arts D.C. presented Brownlee at Lisner Auditorium on Tuesday night, without seeming to sell many more tickets than would have filled their usual venue, the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. In terms of acoustic and average vantage point, the latter is a superior place to hear this kind of recital, although Brownlee had no trouble filling the larger hall with his consistently lovely voice.

As noted before, in terms of being a song recitalist, Brownlee is not to the manner born. In his first half, problems with pronunciation in sets of songs by Verdi, Poulenc, and Joseph Marx impeded the impact of Brownlee's otherwise fine performance. He was most comfortable when the song gave him a character to play with, like the chimney sweep yelling in the street in Verdi's Lo spazzacamino. Where the music required more of a focus on recitation of poetry and melodic line, he was hampered, but the sweet legato of his sound came across in the slower songs, if without the pyrotechnics of bel canto opera, his specialty, his voice did not have as much occasion to shine. The high point of the first half was a set of delectable songs by Joseph Marx, a composer who deserves a full-fledged resurrection from obscurity. Here and in the Poulenc songs, pianist Kevin Murphy tamed the daring keyboard accompaniments, like the mischievous prancing of Marx's charming Die Elfe, with panache and sensitivity, support that allowed Brownlee to open up vocally, as in the gorgeous Hat dich die Liebe berührt.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Lawrence Brownlee offers arc of self-revelation in Vocal Arts DC recital (Washington Post, May 15)

Alberto Ginastera's Cinco canciones popolares argentias provided a more experimental flavor, with crunchy dissonance in a spare, even barren setting of simple folk poems. Spanish seemed like a language that Brownlee has studied more carefully, so the easier sense of diction helped the performance. The same was true in the concluding American sets, beginning with Ben Moore's Broadway-style songs on poetry by Yeats and Joyce. The concert reached its high point with a set of five spirituals, in arrangements made for Brownlee by Damien Sneed, drawn from their recent recording together. Most classical singers who attempt to sing spirituals have not grown up in that tradition, with predictably stilted results.

Brownlee, like the luscious soprano Krysty Swann, heard a couple years ago, cut his musical teeth on this music. Sneed, who hails from Georgia and has a similar dual background in Gospel and classical music, has made attractive, moving adaptations of lesser-known tunes, which set in the sweet spot of Brownlee's voice were devastatingly effective. Certainly, not a dry eye was left in the house when Brownlee dedicated All night, all day, with its angelic falsetto vocalises, to his son, Caleb, who is on the autistic spectrum. (Hear it for yourself as recorded for an NPR Tiny Desk Concert.) The ovations earned three encores, Schubert’s Der Jüngling an der Quelle, the sentimental Be My Love, and -- finally -- an opera aria, Il mio tesoro from Mozart's Don Giovanni.

The 2014-15 season from Vocal Arts D.C. will feature recitals by Matthew Rose, Pretty Yende, John Brancy, Matthew Polenzani, Karine Deshayes, Karen Cargill, and the New York Festival of Song (featuring soprano Corinne Winters and tenor Theo Lebow).

'Il Corsaro' Actually Not So Bad

(L to R) Sebastian Catana, Tamara Wilson, Maestro Antony Walker, Michael Fabiano, Nicole Cabell, Eduardo Castro,
Il Corsaro, 2014, Washington Concert Opera (photo by Don Lassell)

G. Verdi, Il Corsaro, M. Caballé, J. Carreras, J. Norman, New Philharmonia Orchestra, L. Gardelli (Decca, 2009)

One often assumes, with the obscure operas that are the bread and butter of Washington Concert Opera, that the works themselves are generally not worth rediscovering. Sometimes, though, it is not only the fine roster of singers, which artistic director Antony Walker always manages to assemble, that makes this company's performances so memorable. Such was the case with Verdi's little-known opera Il Corsaro, heard at Lisner Auditorium on Sunday evening, which has not only some beautiful individual numbers but signs of the master dramatist Verdi would later become.

This should not be surprising, since the libretto -- by Francesco Maria Piave, one of Verdi's favorite, if easily cowed, collaborators -- takes its story from a tale in verse by Lord Byron, The Corsair, who provided so many arch-Romantic stories for operas and tone poems. It follows Corrado, who leads a group of pirates based on an island in the Aegean against the Turks -- a revolutionary cause near and dear to Lord Byron's heart. Corrado is in love with Medora, who begs him not to leave on this mission, because she has a premonition that she will die before his return. When Corrado and his men attack the Turkish city, the pirate confronts the local pasha, Seid, and is ultimately helped to escape by the pasha's favorite, Gulnara, whom Corrado saved from the fire set by the corsairs. Corrado returns to his island with Gulnara, only to find that his beloved Medora has poisoned herself after hearing the news that Corrado was facing a brutal execution at the hands of the Turks. Although Gulnara has expressed her love for Corrado, the pirate cannot face life without Medora and hurls himself from a cliff.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Tenor Michael Fabiano leads Washington Concert Opera’s ‘Il Corsaro’ (Washington Post, March 11) Gary Tischler, Antony Walker of Washington Concert Opera: ‘It’s All About the Music’ (Georgetowner, February 27)

The title role requires that rarest breed, a dramatic tenor, and Michael Fabiano (first heard in Santa Fe last summer) fit the bill quite beautifully: a room-filling, Byronic-hero kind of sound, unbound confidence as he sang without a score, a sweet legato in the slow pieces, and more strength than finesse in the faster arias. Soprano Tamara Wilson, whom we have admired in staged operas at Wolf Trap and at Washington National Opera, exceeded expectations as Gulnara, the female lead with all the juicy bits -- an amply proportioned, buttery voice with striking breath control (heard in a moving messa di voce, for example), note-perfect intonation, and laser-like accuracy in the fioriture. The same intensity was heard from baritone Sebastian Catana, as the rage-filled pasha -- in some ways a study for the character of Otello much later in Verdi's career -- announced in his opening slow aria with the three trombones, a powerful voice that was skillfully deployed.

Soprano Nicole Cabell made a much more favorable impression here than when I first heard her. It is not a large voice, so she was easily upstaged by the orchestra and the other leads (as in the duet with Fabiano in Act I and the trio at the end of Act III), but in the sensitive role of Medora she had an affecting touch, especially in her Act I aria with the harp and the equally lovely lament in Act III. At the podium Walker was, as always, a sure hand, effective because he demands excitement from his players, plus rubato and shape, even in the silliest oom-pah-pah accompaniments. A couple early entrances -- one in the men's chorus during the attack scene, and one from a trombone (I think) in the introduction to Act III -- were the only defects one might mention.

Shanghai Quartet Plays Sheng, Aldridge

Charles T. Downey, Shanghai Quartet shows dedication to new music in Freer Gallery of Art concert
Washington Post, March 1, 2014

Beethoven, String Quartets (op. 59/2-3), Shanghai Quartet (Delos, 2006)

On Thursday night the Shanghai Quartet returned to its old haunt at the Freer Gallery of Art, whose free concert series the quartet has graced regularly since 1995. Expectations demand that it play a mix of Eastern and Western music and that some new music be included, both of which are the quartet’s specialties. On those two counts, certainly, this concert was a success.

Bright Sheng’s fifth string quartet pushed the musicians to the edge of their abilities, from the brutal “Bartók” pizzicatos in the cello that open the piece and punctuate its sections, a tribute to the Hungarian composer whose “Miraculous Mandarin Suite” inspired the quartet’s subtitle, “The Miraculous.” Frantic pizzicatos and whirring scales did not always line up as they should here, and something about the interpretation revealed the work’s repetitive nature. [Continue reading]

Shanghai Quartet
Music by Sheng, Haydn, Aldridge, Verdi
Freer Gallery of Art

SVILUPPO:
This concert was not, as billed in the program, the Washington area premiere of Bright Sheng's fifth string quartet. The Emerson Quartet, for whom it was written, played it on their Smithsonian Associates series in 2007.

PREVIOUSLY:
Shanghai Quartet: 2006 | 2005

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.

Elizabeth Futral @ NMWA

Charles T. Downey, Soprano Elizabeth Futral displays vocal power at National Museum of Women in the Arts gala (Washington Post, December 13, 2013)

On Wednesday night, it was time to celebrate at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. A gala event to raise money in support of the museum’s Shenson Chamber Music Concert series honored Elizabeth Futral with an award for excellence in the performing arts. The distinguished American soprano offered a brief selection of opera arias, plus a single song, before an audience of well-heeled guests.

[Continue reading]

Elizabeth Futral, soprano
Myra Huang, piano
National Museum of Women in the Arts

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Cursed Production of 'La forza del destino'

La forza del destino, Washington National Opera (photo by Scott Suchman)
Francesca Zambello's record, in her first season as Artistic Director of the Washington National, just fell to 1-1. After a knockout production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Zambello herself directed a new production of one of the lesser Verdi operas, the dramatically muddled and musically episodic La forza del destino, which opened on Saturday night at the Kennedy Center Opera House. It was meant to provide the second panel of a Wagner-Verdi bicentennial diptych -- Verdi's opera was premiered just three years before Wagner's, in 1862 in St. Petersburg -- and it did so, just not in a way that was at all flattering to Verdi.

Good Verdi requires singers who have both power and finesse, and most of this cast was lacking in any kind of subtlety vocally -- perhaps the opera truly is cursed. Chilean tenor Giancarlo Monsalve, who was a uniformly loud and ugly Don Alvaro, made one of the least distinguished WNO debuts in memory, leaving the impression that he was cast primarily for his looks, which seemed suited to the part of the dashing young man who tries to steal away the daughter of the Marquis of Calatrava. No less shouty and unattractive was the Don Carlo of baritone Mark Delavan, not heard at WNO since Aida in 2003, as the Marquis's son who swears revenge on Alvaro, even after he becomes his friend under an assumed identity. (The opera's plot is a mess.) Caught between them is the daughter, Leonora, the role that received the best performance among the leads. Soprano Adina Aaron's voice was large, broad at the bottom and capably transparent at the top, with only the occasional strange bend flat, with an accompanying sound of vocal strain, on some high notes to cause complaint in what was a genial, if not extraordinary, company debut. (Aaron's fall in the final scene, caused by a prop on the floor, was perhaps another proof of the opera's famous curse.) Among the supporting cast, former Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Valeriano Lanchas provided some much-needed comic relief as the bumbling Fra Melitone, while mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze made a hash of the role of Preziosilla.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, WNO’s “Force of Destiny” lets down vocal standards, and Verdi (Washington Post, October 14) Philip Kennicott, La forza del destino at the Washington National Opera (PhilipKennicott.com, October 13) Tim Smith, Washington National Opera offers new take on Verdi's 'Forza' (Baltimore Sun, October 14)

Zambello, not surprisingly, chose to update the action to our era, sadly without adding any new understanding to the story. This allowed her to indulge her fetish for machine-guns and explosions in the war scenes, as in her rather silly Aida at Glimmerglass just last year. The aim of this sort of modernizing gesture is to restore that "ripped from the headlines" sort of urgency to the story, but in this case it just made the ridiculous plot even more ridiculous, as laughter rippling through the house made plain. Unfortunately, WNO did not use the recently published critical edition of Verdi's first version of the opera (ed. Philip Gossett), but the 1869 revision with a few changes. This included moving the opera's famous overture to a point after the opening scene, where it was cheapened by serving as the backdrop for an absurd dumb show. The inn scene was set in some sort of sidewalk sex bar surrounded by shipping containers, with Preziosilla the young gypsy as a rabble-rousing go-go girl, and the Franciscan monastery became a non-specific, possibly Islamic community of some kind, albeit one singing about Mary, the mother of our savior, and "il Santo Spirto." You can leave lines out of the translated supertitles, but we still hear them sung.

The most memorable musical scenes, other than those featuring Adina Aaron's better solos, featured the puissant male chorus, although the frantically gestured conducting of Xian Chang sometimes undermined their scenes. The orchestra still sounded quite good, but the coordination between stage and pit was not always sure. She is a talented conductor, but I have heard of her more as an orchestral conductor, and her WNO debut was not auspicious. The sets, designed by Peter J. Davison, were large and handsome: the red-walled dining room of the Calatrava mansion, the neon-bright sex club, the graffiti-covered inner-city mission. It would probably work better for an opera that is taking place in the late 20th century.

This production continues through October 26, with a partial cast change (October 18 and 22).

Cameristi della Scala

Charles T. Downey, Shutdown doesn’t stop Cameristi della Scala from leading a stroll through Verdi operas (Washington Post, October 11, 2013)

Is it perverse to celebrate the Verdi bicentennial year without singers? Excerpts of Wagner’s operas are performed in symphonic format all the time, so perhaps a precedent has been set. Cameristi della Scala, a chamber orchestra made up of musicians from the orchestra of Milan’s most famous theater, went one better on Wednesday night by performing other composers’ instrumental fantasies on themes from Giuseppe Verdi’s operas.

The musicians had the bad fortune to arrive in Washington during the government shutdown, which has canceled the free concert series at the concert’s intended venue, the Library of Congress. Happily, the Italian Embassy saved the day, offering its small auditorium for this performance, part of the ongoing festivities of the Italian Year of Culture. [Continue reading]

Cameristi della Scala
Verdi arrangements by Giovanni Avolio, Luigi Mancinelli, Camillo Sivori, Antonio Bazzini, and Antonio Melchiori (listen to an excerpt)
Italian Embassy

Rare Performance of 'I masnadieri' from WCO

Charles T. Downey, Washington Concert Opera offers Verdi rarity ‘I masnadieri’ in time for composer’s birthday (Washington Post, September 24, 2013)

Verdi, I masnadieri, M. Caballé, C. Bergonzi, New Philharmonia Orchesra, L. Gardelli

It need not take the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth to appreciate his importance in the history of opera, but it is a good excuse. Washington Concert Opera has dedicated its 2013-14 season to the Italian composer, beginning with a performance of the lesser-known “I masnadieri” on Sunday night at Lisner Auditorium. (Another Verdi rarity, “Il corsaro,” will follow in March.) [Continue reading]

Verdi, I masnadieri
Washington Concert Opera
Lisner Auditorium

Additional thoughts:
Soprano Lisette Oropesa has a pretty voice, with some fiery notes at the very top (taxed just a bit when she was challenged by the ensemble in tutti scenes), although minor intonation issues, caused partially by an intense vibrato that creeps in at points and perhaps a slight lack of breath support, brought the performance down a notch. Her physical beauty, however, will endear her to opera directors looking for high-definition closeups, and her face is highly expressive: in the "hate duet" with Francesco in Act II, she shot a large repertoire of angry glances in his direction, perfectly camera-ready.

Tenor Russell Thomas sang with an impressive squillo throughout a long evening, flagging just a bit in the last half-hour of the opera. The strain got to Scott Hendricks, who looked like he would burst a vein by the time of Francesco's Sogno (Hell nightmare) in Act IV. Although the choral numbers are risible, there are several rather gorgeous arias and ensembles: Amalia's Act II cavatina ("Tu del mio Carlo al sena"), with its harp and woodwind introduction; the slow part of Amalia's duet with Carlo in Act III, with its tender cadenza for both singers (and the optional E-flat at the final cadence of the fast section for Amalia, which Oropesa took); and Francesco's melodramatic hell aria in Act IV.

Dip Your Ears, No. 154 (Trebbie’s Verdi)

G.Verdi, Hits'n'Pieces, G.Noseda / A.Netrebko (+ R.Villazon) DG

Nocturnal Verdi Toffee

There is certainly a market for Anna Netrebko recording a Verdi hits’n’pieces, especially since she’s now left Mozart behind her and aims for rôles that demand a darker, larger voice than, say, Figaro’s agile Susanna. After her successful traveling operatic circus with Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Verdi’s Giovanna D’Arco—successfully launched it in Salzburg—will receive that treatment next. Two arias are wisely included as teasers of things to come.

Macbeth is the focus of this album and she is a gorgeously, focused singing Lady Macbeth, though strangely without as much as an inkling of demented wickedness. The sleepwalking-scene takes place under a self conscious limelight, not on the crepuscular edge between two worlds. Her Munich premiere of the rôle in 2014 should yield a bit more, dramatically… benefiting from her stage talent that is naturally lost on a CD.

Rolando Villazon, her erstwhile partner in fame, is on hand to help out for the duet among the Trovatore scenes. This, along with the other Act IV Trovatore scenes (“Miserere”) is of the lavish beauty that makes the attraction of Netrebko’s “Verdi”. The same goes for Elisabetta’s aria “Tu che le vanità” from Don Carlo. Callas-disciples will scoff of course, Netrebko-fans will sigh, and anyone who isn’t much into Verdi—snore.

It’s not why anyone will listen to this disc, but Gianandrea Noseda’s conducting of the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino is outstanding and plugs in the musical excitement where it might otherwise be missing.

Motivated by AUDITORIUM Magazine.

'Falstaff' at Wolf Trap

(L to R) Tracy Cox (Alice Ford), Mireille Asselin (Nannetta), Margaret Gawrysiak (Quickly),
and Carolyn Sproule (Meg) in Falstaff, Wolf Trap Opera, 2013 (photo by Carol Pratt)
Five years after Wolf Trap Opera presented Verdi's first and only other comedy, Un Giorno di Regno, the company let the other shoe drop. Their new production of Verdi's Falstaff is timed conveniently with the composer's bicentennial year, an event marked by most summer festivals this year. Heard on opening night yesterday, in the small theater at the Barns, it is a pleasing if not ideal version of this most masterful of Verdi's operas.

Verdi, Falstaff, T. Gobbi, E. Schwarzkopf, L. Alva, A. Moffo, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, H. von Karajan

The cast of young artists performs at a high level, led by the Alice Ford of dramatic soprano Tracy Cox, a juicy and puissant voice, and the Ford of baritone Norman Garrett, towering in presence and both powerful and refined in sound. Their foil, the hilarious and pompous Falstaff of bass-baritone Craig Colclough, showed remarkable range in the role after an imposing Commendatore and sly Shadow in last year's Don Giovanni and The Rake's Progress. Margaret Gawyrsiak, who stole the show last season as Baba the Turk, came close to doing the same as a guest artist Mistress Quickly, and mezzo-soprano Carolyn Sproule was a comely Meg.

Herbert von Karajan is to blame for me thinking that every Nannetta should sound like Anna Moffo, when in fact no one does, but Canadian soprano Mireille Asselin came admirably close, a slight tendency to sharpness aside, with a radiantly transparent sound as the Queen of the Fairies. Tenor Matthew Grills, a Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Winner last year, was her equal as Fenton, with a pretty sound and solid high notes, revealing no sound of strain, in the gorgeous aria that introduces the final scene. The supporting cast were also in good form -- the braying Caius of tenor Juan José de León, the bright-nosed, Scarecrow-like Bardolfo of Brenton Ryan, and the rotten-toothed Pistola of Aaron Sorenson -- rounding out a well-balanced ensemble that made the most of the exquisite and rollicking fugue with which Verdi adroitly ends the opera, the most savant of rib-jabs.

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Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'La Traviata' Redux

Michael Fabiano (Alfredo) and Brenda Rae (Violetta) in La Traviata, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
It is the last week of July, and that means press week here at the Santa Fe Opera, the chance to hear what five operas, and other goodies, are on offer. My week in New Mexico began last night with Verdi's La Traviata, one of the season's two chestnuts -- part of a brilliant programming formula here. The staging is a revival, with some reworking, of Laurent Pelly's 2009 production, then starring Natalie Dessay in her title role debut, which I covered for Opernwelt. This performance comes on the heels of a re-examination of the life of courtesan Marie Duplessis, the subject of a rewarding new book by Julie Kavanagh, The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis. The book separates the life of the person -- the poor girl from Normandy, abandoned by her father and then sold by him into sexual slavery, who rose to great wealth as a Parisian courtesan, only to be doomed by her tragic love for Franz Liszt -- from the legend later concocted by Alexandre Dumas fils (who was one of her paramours) in La Dame aux Camélias and, through it, Verdi's Violetta.

J. Kavanagh, The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis (2013)

Soprano Brenda Rae was not an overwhelming Violetta, with not much power at the bottom but nice high notes -- including an interpolated high note at the end of "Sempre libera" -- and agility in the fast passages. She caught the frivolous side of the character, with a shameless edge rather than coyness, and acted well. Tenor Michael Fabiano was a puissant but also sensitive Alfredo, leaving out the high note at the end of his Act II cabaletta but hitting many others, his slightly stilted manner on stage suiting the character. The Germont of British baritone Roland Wood was disappointing in its shallow tone, the center of the pitch not always apparent and the high notes sometimes strained. Without a more suave legato, the character's moving slow arias lose most of their appeal. It was also a mistake to have Germont seem impatient to leave during the Act II duet with Violetta, almost dismissing her in a way that made what is easily the most beautiful love duet in the opera seem rude and insincere.

Pelly and his set designers (Chantal Thomas, assisted by Camille Dugas), rethought the second act, running it into the first with only a short pause and improving the staging significantly. Perhaps taking Alfredo's line about being on cloud nine ("io vivo quasi in ciel"), several of the large boxes of the set were opened up, to reveal views of a perfect blue sky with fluffy clouds. The effect was somewhat surreal, almost like something you would see in a Magritte painting -- I half-expected Germont to enter in a bowler hat. It also served to lighten up what was one of Pelly's most drab stagings, with its mausoleum-like boxes serving as cemetery, party scenes, country cottage, and Parisian apartment.

Other Reviews: James M. Keller, SFO’s ‘La traviata’ has ups, downs (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 21) John Stege, Violetta Revisited (Santa Fe Reporter, July 23)

The 2009 production was conducted beautifully by Frédéric Chaslin, who was appointed chief conductor for the company but who then resigned last year. He will be replaced next year by Harry Bicket, after this season's carousel of conductors. At the podium for La Traviata is British conductor Leo Hussain, in his company debut, and he led with sensitive gestures, drawing out the nostalgia of the opening prelude with finesse. Unfortunately, having wrung out every bit of emotion from the first act, he proceeded to stretch the score in ways that yielded beauty sometimes -- a gorgeous, forlorn clarinet solo in Act II as Violetta wrote her letter, for example -- but also sapped the final act of most of its energy, laden as it was with lugubrious tempos and exaggerated grand pauses. One rarely has to help Verdi at all with the dramatic arc in his best operas, because it is all laid out there for you in the pacing and orchestration.

This production continues through August 22, at the Santa Fe Opera.

'Otello' at the Castleton Festival

In a formidable stride in its fifth season in the picturesque fields of Rappahannock County, Virginia, the Castleton Festival’s production of Verdi’s tragic Otello was almost a triumph. Conducted by Castleton founder Lorin Maazel in the Festival Theater, which except for the pit and stage is something of a barn-like tent structure, grand opera was offered in a chamber setting.

Maazel’s show-stopping orchestra of young musicians set the bar for musical precision and expressive agility; however, some of the lead singers did not exploit the intimacy of venue in this Glyndebourne production by Sir Peter Hall. The Iago of baritone Javier Arrey channeled evil through sinister facial expressions and body language furthered by his clear, resonant singing in Shakespearean soliloquys like the Creed aria. Similarly, bass-baritone Davone Tines' quick acting as Lodovico -- particularly with his eyes -- in combination with an immediacy in singing compelled one's focus and trust. Tenor Kirk Dougherty's gentle singing as Cassio reinforced his aloofness while being framed by Iago as Desdemona’s gallant adulterous lover. The chorus of young singers in summer residence sang with exceptional energy, while the two-story staging (directed by Lynne Hockney) helped create that grand opera feel from a cleverly simple set (designed by John Gunter).

Other Articles: Joan Reinthaler, Castleton Festival’s ‘La Voix Humaine’ and ‘Otello’ (Washington Post, June 21) Tim Smith, Castleton Festival delivers strong lineup of opera, theater (Baltimore Sun, July 17) Roger Piantadosi, The Castleton Festival: right turn, no red (Rappahannock News, July 11)

Alternatively, the opera’s leads, Otello (tenor Frank Porretta, stepping in for an indisposed Rafael Rojas for three performances) and Desdemona (soprano Joyce El-Khoury) seemed distant musically and visually, with quite broad acting. This cool, steady approach might be better suited for halls or giant arenas that seat thousands, rather than the hundreds such as at Castleton. Porretta seemed more focused on singing than fully embodying his self-destruction contrived by Iago. Desdemona, though vocally more impressive, especially in the Ave Maria, did not supersede Otello’s befuddled temperament, leaving one with the feeling that this production, albeit close, did not reach its potential. Without the listener being totally convinced artistically by the main characters, the concluding murder of Desdemona by pillow suffocation was bizarrely as banal as it was repugnant.

This production continues through July 28, at the Castleton Festival, in Rappahannock County, Virginia.