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.

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

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Adieu, José van Dam

Massenet, Don Quichotte (dir. Laurent Pelly), J. van Dam, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, M. Minkowski (released on May 29, 2012) Naïve DR 2147 | 1h51 Massenet, Don Quichotte, F. Furlanetto, A. Kiknadze, Mariinsky Theater, V. Gergiev (released on March 13, 2012) Mariinsky MAR0523 | 111'34" Massenet, Don Quichotte, J. van Dam, T. Berganza, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, M. Plasson (1992, re-released in 2010)

The appeal of this new DVD is in the interwoven layers of the perfect twilight moment: an opera about Don Quixote, an old man living with regret; composed with great skill by a composer at the end of a long career; sung by baritone José van Dam, who had made the title role a specialty, returning to it in a grand gesture as he retired from the stage. To celebrate van Dam's career, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, where the Belgian bass-baritone was trained and educated, mounted this intriguing new production of the opera two years ago, directed by Laurent Pelly. Everything the French director has touched has impressed me, either in person or through the reviews of other critics: Cendrillon, Platée, and La Traviata in Santa Fe; Offenbach's La Belle Hélène at the Théâtre du Châtelet; Les Contes d'Hoffmann and just about every other work by Offenbach for the Opéra de Lyon; Love for Three Oranges in Amsterdam. It was no surprise that Pelly created something that seemed to go against the content of the libretto but ultimately ended up enhancing one's understanding of the work.

Pelly has recast the action of Don Quichotte as the jumbled thoughts of Don Quixote, alone in his study with his books, much as he is described at the end of Cervantes' novel. After his final adventure, bruised and taken with a delirious fever, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is brought home on a hay cart. His niece and old servant "lay him down in his ancient bed," writes Cervantes. "He looked upon them very earnestly, and could not conjecture where he was." The women, again horrified at the personal harm brought to the old man by his love of novels of chivalry, rail against "all books of knighthood," beseeching "Heaven to throw down, into the very center of the bottomless pit, the authors of so many lies and ravings." Don Quixote dies in his bed, and Cervantes records the epitaph on his tomb.

Pelly's Don Quichotte first appears seated in a room with a single reading lamp, a book in his hands and a stack of volumes at his side. He is costumed in a suit that looks more or less of the era of the opera's composition, in the late 19th century (costumes designed by Pelly). The sounds of the opening choral scene resonate in his ears, as if imagined. The floor is covered with scattered papers, and as the light expands we see that he is a sort of hoarder, in a barren room next to a pile of books and papers that grows and grows throughout the opera, threatening to engulf the whole stage (sets by Barbara de Limburg). As he reads, his memories seem to flood into the actual space around him, a jumble of episodes mixed together by the librettist, Henri Cain, who took some of the scenes from the play by Jacques Le Lorrain and others directly from the Cervantes novel.

In his brief note on the production, Pelly says that the reading figure could be anyone moved by the story, or by any story -- Don Quixote, the elderly Massenet, the spectator, the author, the director, a character. The conceit allows van Dam to be on stage while the entrance of his character is prepared, until the chorus bursts through the door and he is lost in -- becomes part of -- the memory himself. Although the action never returns to that cluttered study, death is never far from Don Quichotte in this staging -- even the group of bandits, from whom he seeks the return of Dulcinée's stolen necklace, are costumed like undertakers. If you are expecting to see Spanish settings, you will be largely disappointed, although the immense arms of a windmill do make an appearance.

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'Don Quichotte'

This article was first published at The Classical Review on June 6, 2012.

Massenet, Don Quichotte, F. Furlanetto, A. Kiknadze, Mariinsky Theater, V. Gergiev (released on March 13, 2012) Mariinsky MAR0523 | 111'34" Massenet, Don Quichotte, J. van Dam, T. Berganza, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, M. Plasson (1992, re-released in 2010) Massenet, Don Quichotte (dir. Laurent Pelly), J. van Dam, Théâtre de la Monnaie, M. Minkowski (released on May 29, 2012)

Massenet must have identified with the knight of the sorrowful countenance from Cervantes’d great novel, featured in one of his final works for the stage, the melancholy and charming Don Quichotte. Just two years before his death, the composer was also in love with his Dulcinée, mezzo-soprano Lucy Arbell, even dedicating his terse but entertaining memoirs (My Recollections, in English) to her.

Massenet was susceptible to the charms of a woman’s voice, having conceived some of his earlier operas (Manon, Esclarmonde, Thaïs) for the American coloratura soprano Sibyl Sanderson, for example, and equally entranced by Lucy Arbell’s lower voice, he made the role of Dulcinée suit it in every way. Even so, Don Quichotte is perhaps better known for its extraordinary bass title role, created by the magnetic Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin at the premiere at the Opéra de Monte Carlo in February 1910. Even as part of an opera not widely recorded, the role has become associated with some of the great bass-baritones of the 20th century, including Gabriel Bacquier, Ruggero Raimondi, and especially José van Dam. This new recording from the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg features the Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto in the role, recorded for the first time.

The creation of Don Quichotte followed an exasperating period for Massenet, recently frustrated in his attempts to produce his opera Bacchus. In his memoirs, Massenet notes that it “came into my life as a soothing balm. I had great need of it.” The sense of ease with the subject matter -- the libretto by Henri Cain was based on a play adaptation of the Cervantes novel by Jacques Le Lorrain -- comes across in the handling of the title role, part buffoon and part Christ-like redeemer. Few scenes in opera are as moving as that at the end of the Third Act, when Don Quichotte blesses the crowd of bandits, a particularly radiant moment (‘Je suis le chevalier errant’).

Some of the musical qualities recall the combination of knightly redemption in Parsifal, for example. Massenet was blessed in the singers he had for the premiere, especially Chaliapin, not mentioned by Massenet in his memoirs, although he was reportedly excellent in the title role. Always focused on his leading lady, Massenet saluted the “curious audacity” of Arbell, who insisted on learning to play the guitar accompaniment of her serenade in the Fourth Act herself, a feat that few Dulcinées, I would wager, have been able to repeat.

Furlanetto, now in his 60s, is still in generally fine voice, with only a tendency to hit the underside of some pitches to criticize. In fact, his tonal quality is, if anything, too robust to make him believable as the skinny old knight. This is only one of the reasons to prefer the José van Dam recording, made at the Halle-aux-grains in Toulouse in fairly good studio sound (and recently re-released by EMI at a budget price, albeit with no printed libretto).

Anna Kiknadze has a more weighty bottom range than Teresa Berganza, who sang opposite van Dam in the EMI recording, but nowhere near the same gleaming high notes or overall power, making Kiknadze often fade into the sonic background. Andrei Serov gives the role of Sancho Pança all of the buffo bluster he can manage, although along with the rest of the cast -- aside from Furlanetto, made up of young singers from the Mariinsky’s training academy -- the French diction leaves something to be desired (another fault by comparison with the mostly French EMI recording), with the exception of Didier Jouanny, who does the honors on the speaking role of the bandit chief.

At the podium, as one expects, Valery Gergiev never met a fast tempo he did not like to push, making some of the crowd scenes a little over-agitated. Among these are the Fourth Act, with its folksy Spanish dances as alluring background to Dulcinée’s sad aria ‘Lorsque le temps d’amour a fui,’ followed by an ensemble scene with her other suitors and friends, with echoes of the big chatter ensembles of Falstaff.

In an interesting side note, Massenet got his musical start as a percussionist, even supporting himself by playing timpani for six years at the Théâtre Lyrique, a fact that makes the use of percussion in his scores interesting. These bright, perky numbers are contrasted with the more elegiac scenes for Don Quichotte, especially the Fifth Act, where an interlude with ardent solo cello leads to the knight’s touching death scene, visited at the end once more by the voice of Dulcinée. Even with some unnecessary stretching of slow sections, however, Gergiev’s timing is only four minutes shorter than that of Michel Plasson on the EMI set. The orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater turns on a dime with its demanding leader, also producing some lovely, ethereal sounds, in the dusk scene that introduces Act III, for example, and the chorus provides the most thrilling vocal moments in this performance.

Two years ago, approaching the age of 70, José van Dam officially retired from singing with a final performance of Don Quichotte, in a production directed by Laurent Pelly, under the baton of Marc Minkowski, at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. That performance has been released on DVD by Naïve, so the final word on the best version of this beautiful, often overlooked work -- part of an ongoing revival of Massenet’s operas, too long deemed sugary and facile -- will have to wait.

SEE ALSO:
Nicolas Blanmont, Mémorial Van Dam (La Libre Belgique, May 6, 2010)

Other reviews of the José van Dam farewell production, under the baton of Marc Minkowski, at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels

Jules Massenet, My Recollections (dedicated in the English version to Lucy Arbell)

Interviews with Teresa Berganza (Ionarts, March 9, 2005)

Verdi, Falstaff (Mariinsky Opera, 2007)

The Joys of Massenet's 'Werther'

Francesco Meli (Werther) and Sonia Ganassi (Charlotte), in Werther, Washington National Opera, 2012 (photo by Scott Suchman)

Two performances of Massenet's Werther in less than a year -- but do not expect me to complain, especially when the performances are both so good. After Washington Concert Opera last year, Washington National Opera has returned to this unabashedly Romantic opera for the first time since 1996. The story, adapted quite freely from the 1774 epistolary novel by Goethe, is ready-made for opera -- a young woman caught between the marriage arranged for her and the love of a sensitive poet, who cannot let go of the dream of true romance.

Werther needs an excellent tenor to sing the title role, which Washington has also had twice -- Giuseppe Filianoti last year, and in an exemplary WNO debut, Francesco Meli this year. He had almost all of the qualities required for this daunting role: a heroic, ringing top (only a couple of the very highest notes weakened just slightly on Saturday night), a dulcet tone giving him control over the softer passages (a lovely "O Nature, pleine de grâce"), and a sincere and arresting stage presence. Werther is meant to outshine everyone else -- in fact, because he sings such beautiful music, one may be more inclined to excuse the character's overly dramatic, self-indulgent poetic excesses -- and in Meli's hands he certainly did. Mezzo-soprano Sonia Ganassi had strength when she needed it as Charlotte, especially in the moving letter scene, but she shrank into the background in many places, not helped by the dumpy costumes, otherwise quite becoming (designed by Barilà). The fault is perhaps due to Massenet's score as much as it is to Ganassi: Massenet wrote much of his best music for the soprano voice -- Manon, Thaïs, Esclarmonde, La Fée in Cendrillon, many conceived for the apparently astounding American soprano Sibyl Sanderson -- and the much more sparkling writing for Charlotte's younger sister, Sophie, here providing a fizzy, light-as-a-feather main stage outing for former Domingo-Cafritz artist Emily Albrink, should be a sign to Werther that he might be better off with her.

Emily Albrink (Sophie) and Sonia Ganassi (Charlotte), in Werther, Washington National Opera, 2012 (photo by Scott Suchman)

Andrew Foster-Williams was just as robust of voice as Albert, Charlotte's hapless husband, as he was in the company's memorable Tamerlano -- puissant, with excellent intonation, if perhaps too many wrinkles of vibrato in the tone. Among the supporting cast, bass Kenneth Kellogg had the strongest turn as Johann, one of the comic-relief drinking buddies along with Tim Augustin's Schmidt, friends of Charlotte's slightly overwhelmed paterfamilias, Le Bailli, sung with comic verve by Julien Robbins. Young singers Jason Buckwalter and Maria Dolan Barnes were an earnest pair as the other lovers, Brühlmann and Käthchen, who are more interested in books and poetry than each other. Director Chris Alexander did his best work in the note-perfect opening of the opera, capturing the childhood innocence of Charlotte's household, with delightful contributions from the young members of the WNO Children's Chorus (directed by Michelle Kunz). Charlotte, the eldest daughter, is raising her many younger siblings after her mother's death, and her maternal role and the charms of the children are at least a part of Werther's affection for her.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, Opera review: ‘Werther’ at the Washington National Opera (Washington Post, May 14) Tim Smith, 'Werther' gets eloquent treatment from Washington National Opera (Baltimore Sun, May 14) Alex Baker, Werther at WNO (Wellsung, May 14) T. L. Ponick, ‘Werther’ is a feel-good tragic tale (Washington Times, May 10) Emily Cary, Baritone shines in 'Werther' (Washington Examiner, May 10)

The production comes from Opera Australia by way of the Opéra de Montréal, and it is generally effective, although the updating of the story to the 1920s, in what appears to be the American (or, conveniently, any other country's) heartland -- wheat fields, flapper outfits, bobbed hair -- makes the central crisis, an arranged marriage, seem far less plausible. The sets by Michael Yeargan are large and plain, serving as both the garden of the family home, the courtyard in front of the church, and the well-appointed home of Albert -- the last drained of all color, down to the white books in the white shelves, in perhaps heavy-handed symbolism of the loveless marriage. Rather than the bleak, snowy Christmas Eve landscape that is described in the libretto for the introduction to the final scene, the death of Werther, Alexander staged a scene showing Charlotte, nervous about what Werther will do with the pistols Albert has just forced her to send to him, detained at the house by arriving dinner guests. While intriguing on its own terms, this shifted the focus from Werther's despair to Charlotte's anxiety, which was one of the causes of the quasi-deflation of the final scene. The stage within a stage arrangement of the set, it turned out, was all for the ultimately unneeded effect of Albert's dining room rotating to reveal Werther's grubby garret. The clumsy staging of Werther's death, with too much standing up and dying again, caused some laughter in the audience. Emmanuel Villaume did the honors in the pit, slightly hysteric of gesture for a performance that had its fair share of raggedness. Principal clarinetist David Jones played some of the alto saxophone part (used by Massenet throughout the score but often, as here, added selectively), most effective in the bluesy solos that tint Charlotte's tragic aria "Va! laisse couler mes larmes."

This production continues for six more performances (May 14 to 27), in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Krysty Swann Soars

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Krysty Swann at the Phillips Collection
Washington Post, May 31, 2011

Krysty Swann has a voice, and she knows how to use it, as she showed in an hour-long recital at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon. The Detroit-born mezzo-soprano, whose star has been rising since she was featured a few years ago in New York City Opera’s production of Richard Danielpour’s opera “Margaret Garner,” displayed an instrument of immense power, natural beauty of tone and luscious legato line.

Not surprisingly, she excelled in operatic selections with which she seemed most familiar and sang without a score. Arias from Massenet’s “Werther,” Cilea’s “Adriana Lecouvreur” (“Acerba volutta” for the Princesse de Bouillon) and Saint-Saens’s “Samson et Dalila” indicated that Swann’s strengths lie in dramatic mezzo territory. The voice makes a broad swath of sound, the vibrato not spinning out of control, with a vol­canic chest voice and equally blazing high notes, shown in one fell swoop on a two-octave run at a particularly thrilling point in “Amour! Viens aider ma faiblesse!” [Continue reading]

Krysty Swann, mezzo-soprano
With Steven Silverman (piano) and Elizabeth Field (violin)
Phillips Collection

Filianoti's Fervent Werther

In many ways Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther is the quintessential proto-Romantic tale. A sensitive, poetic young man falls in love, but the woman he idealizes is already promised by her parents to another man. Unable to conceive of loving another, Werther takes her father’s pistols and kills himself, a literary suicide that sparked off a wave of real-life copycat suicides around Europe, as men who took to dressing like Goethe’s character and writing their own effusive poetry also followed him into death. The only operatic adaptation of the work that has really endured on its own is Werther by Jules Massenet, produced in both German and French versions in 1892. It succeeds or fails on the basis of its title role tenor, and Washington Concert Opera’s performance on Sunday night was a spectacular success mostly because of the astounding voice of Italian tenor Giuseppe Filianoti.

Washingtonians have waited a long time for the chance to hear Filianoti sing. As his career was gaining momentum, he was scheduled to make his debut with Washington National Opera in Lucrezia Borgia in 2008, but he backed out. He was replaced at the eleventh hour for a planned engagement at La Scala, and since then Filianoti has been struggling vocally, as anyone who follows reviews of his performances can observe. (Last year, Filianoti told James Jorden in the New York Post that he had been treated for thyroid cancer in 2006 and that the operation had damaged his voice.) So Filianoti finally made his local debut with Washington Concert Opera instead, in the role for which he has gained great acclaim, and with the exception of one slightly dicey high note at the end of the second act (“Appelle-moi!”), Filianoti sounded heroic, right on pitch, and in control of a lovely tone at all dynamics and in all tessituras. He had the most comprehensible French diction of a rather varied cast in that regard, and his legato spin (in his opening prayer, for example) was just as effective as his more actively articulated moments. The only minor flaw was a slight raggedness at the release of some long high notes.

Massenet was most inspired by the soprano voice, and some of his greatest music was written for the American soprano Sibyl Sanderson, who became his muse. Nowhere is that clearer than in Werther, where the role of Charlotte, created for a mezzo-soprano, is not only not the equal of Werther but even somewhat eclipsed by the smaller role of Sophie, Charlotte’s younger sister, whose flighty, vivacious nature is represented in some flights of vocal fancy. Jennifer Larmore brought considerable dignity to Charlotte, deploying her full, resonant lower register to powerful effect. The vibrato has become noticeably broad and over-active, and some of the high notes edged toward stridency, but arias like “Va! laisse couler mes larmes,” with its bluesy solo for saxophone (Massenet wrote for the instrument throughout the score, but it was played only selectively by first bassoonist Eric Dircksen, who put down his bassoon to take up the sax), and the letter-reading scene at the start of Act III had palpable dramatic power. As Sophie, Joélle Harvey had a fluttery, soubrette kind of voice that was very pretty and bubbly, giving her a coquettish turn in the laughter aria ("Ah! Le rire est beni!"), for example.

Timothy Mix headed up the supporting cast with a puissant baritone for Albert, Charlotte’s husband. Tenor Patrick Toomey and bass-baritone Eugene Galvin were funny as the pair of drinking buddies, Schmidt and Johann, after one mistaken early entrance by Galvin in the first scene. Bass Matthew Lau was fusty and fussy as the Bailiff, Charlotte’s father, with a slightly unpleasant nasality in the sound. A sextet of child singers was appropriately cute as the Bailiff’s burgeoning family, giving the Christmas carols they sing an authentic off-key quality.

Other Articles: Joe Banno, Giuseppe Filianoti sings beautifully in Washington Concert Opera’s “Werther” (Washington Post, May 24) Anne Midgette, Promising tenors, hitting a low note (Washington Post, May 21) Emily Cary, Fairfax native Timothy Mix returns to Washington in "Werther" (Washington Examiner, May 16)

Artistic Director Antony Walker, fresh off his Metropolitan Opera debut in Orfeo ed Euridice, led his orchestra with a sure hand. He has that most important quality for a conductor, a sure sense of ensemble movement and the vocabulary of gestures to keep all of his forces aligned. In particular, he always takes care not to allow the instruments to swamp the singers, while also providing them enough supportive sound at the loudest points. Winds and brass were the most solid sections, with fine contributions from the horns, in particular, while the violins were the least unified and reliable, on very high attacks and in fast running passages. Cello and violin solos, like those at Werther’s moody entrance, were lovely, and the two percussionists added considerable oomph to the big climaxes, most notably with a thunder machine in the storm scene. It is unfortunate than nothing can be done about having to use a pretty awful synthesizer to cover the organ part in the chapel scene.

If you missed Werther this time around, you have only to wait until next spring for Washington National Opera’s production of it (May 12 to 27, 2012), sadly not with Giuseppe Filianoti. Washington Concert Opera’s two performances next season will be devoted to Verdi’s Attila (September 9, with John Relyea, Brenda Harris, and Jason Stearns) and Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila (May 13, 2012, with Brandon Jovanovich, Michelle DeYoung, and Greer Grimsley).