On Forbes: The Met's Klinghoffer Brouhaha

“The verdict was in, right after the premiere: The Death of Klinghoffer, John Adams’ opera that was performed at the MET to vociferous and heated, if small, protests (amply supplemented by local politicians) on October 20, is not an anti-semitic work.

Not a particularly surprising verdict, actually—that much was known already and we needn’t feign surprise now. This alleged anti-semitism had been a non-issue when it was first performed in Brussels (in 1991). Nor had it been an issue on the subsequent performances in New York (Brooklyn Academy of Music, also 1991), or Philadelphia (Curtis, 2005), or this very production’s earlier performance in London (English National Opera, early 2012). The only story in the Klinghoffer-controversy is that it became a story at all...

Continue reading here, at Forbes.com

Final Word on 'Death of Klinghoffer'

Death of Klinghoffer, Metropolitan Opera (photo by Ken Howard)
The reviews are in for the Metropolitan Opera's production of The Death of Klinghoffer, which opened on Monday night. The commentary (not to say, the reviews), polarized in an unappetizing political way, has been difficult to read. The excesses of both sides are absurd: "Putting on this opera is equivalent to a second Holocaust!" just as much as "No one has any right to criticize this opera for romanticizing terrorists!" Of course, John Adams, Alice Goodman, and the Metropolitan Opera have the right to produce the work -- we live in a free society. Just as obviously, Leon Klinghoffer's daughters are understandably dismayed at the way their father's murder was connected to the political grievances of his murderers.

As I wrote this past summer, if the story were rooted in another conflict but in everything else parallel, the reaction would have been different. Imagine an opera about the kidnapping of girls in Nigeria that opens with a chorus laying out the political and religious grievances of the Boko Haram militants, calling for the establishment of Sharia law. Imagine an opera about the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl that opens with a chorus describing the causes behind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's hatred of the United States. Imagine an opera about the murder of Matthew Shepard that opens with a chorus about the need to defend the American family from homosexuality. If any of those imagined operas were real, the family members of the victims would be upset -- and many other people would not only feel sympathy for those family members but also would feel outraged themselves.

"Terrorism is irrational," write Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer. "It should never be explained away or justified. Nor should the death of innocent civilians be misunderstood as an acceptable means for drawing attention to perceived political grievances. Unfortunately, The Death of Klinghoffer does all of this and sullies the memory of our father in the process."

The Reviews: New York Times | Washington Post | The New Yorker | Wall Street Journal | New York Observer | Bloomberg Financial Times | Los Angeles Times | Justin Davidson | David Patrick Stearns | Forbes | Martin Bernheimer (1992)

Burying 'Klinghoffer'

J. Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer (directed by Penny Woolcock)

Charles T. Downey, The Klinghoffer Controversy
Musicology Now, June 27

The Metropolitan Opera and its General Manager, Peter Gelb, took a considerable risk by planning to mount John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer this coming fall. The furor generated by the work's U.S. premiere in 1991 convinced its librettist, Alice Goodman, that it was time to stop writing opera librettos. As expected, the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups have continued their objections, pressuring the Met to withdraw its production. Gelb instead offered the compromise of going ahead with the production but canceling the HD simulcast, planned for November 15, when audiences in movie theaters around the world could have seen the final performance of the run.

For many opera fans who have never had the chance to see Klinghoffer live, myself included, the decision was disappointing...

[Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
jfl, Klinghoffer Is Dead (Ionarts, May 2, 2004)

The Met on the Global Stage

The Peter Gelb publicity machine churns on, with a major piece on his work at the Metropolitan Opera featured on 60 Minutes. The New York company is in the French news this week, because the Louvre will host a series of cinematic broadcasts of operas from the Met, beginning this month. According to an article in Le Point (Le Louvre diffuse les opéras de légende du "Met" de New York, October 31), Gelb himself will be in Paris to introduce the series this weekend. Marie-Aude Roux also weighed in on the matter of the company's music director, James Levine, with an interview for Le Monde (James Levine, "fondamentalement optimiste", October 30) with some interesting questions (my translation):

What would you have done if you had had to give up your career?

My vocation has always been music. It is what has always lifted me up and saved me. As a child, I sang before I could talk. But I would have done other things: I would have devoted myself to teaching, to painting, or to writing. I am passionate about everything concerning the history of art. I am also a fundamentally optimistic person. I have always done what I can to live the sort of life I wanted, the best that I could, and now I know that I continue doing that.

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Review Round-Up: 'Two Boys'

I was in New York this weekend to see Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Metropolitan Opera but could not stay for opening night of the company's new production of Nico Muhly's recent opera Two Boys on Monday night. It is a ripped-from-the-headlines kind of story, with a libretto by Craig Lucas on a 2001 story involving a teenager who used an Internet chatroom to manipulate another teenager into nearly killing him. The reviews are in, and many are as negative as the London reviews of the world premiere in 2011 (including by some very thoughtful people), or worse -- to my surprise, given how kindly disposed to Muhly most of these critics are. Possibly related -- the opera has been excluded from the Met's cinema broadcast series.

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The Met's 'Midsummer Night's Dream'

The Metropolitan Opera did not get around to staging my favorite opera by Benjamin Britten, A Midsummer Night's Dream, until 1996. I did not get to see it then, or when it was revived in 2002. For the composer's centenary, the company returned to this colorful production, directed by Tim Albery with sets and costumes by Antony McDonald, this season. It was well worth the trek up to Manhattan for this past Saturday's matinee, only the second time we have reviewed this opera, after a charming staging at Wolf Trap in 2010. It is not really an opera for small children, although the large number of them in the audience for this performance likely had no awareness of the disturbing undercurrent of this work for Britten -- the interest of Oberon, the "King of Shadows" as Puck names him, in a changeling boy that his queen, Tytania, tries unsuccessfully to keep from him. Britten likely saw in the character his own attraction to boys, possibly never realized. The end of Act I, when Oberon leads the boy offstage, after putting Tytania out of commission, is a chilling moment.

Read more »

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

Pathetic, Peter Gelb?

Peter Gelb, and with him the Metropolitan Opera, enjoyed “an 8-hour New Coke/Coca-Cola Classic day” last week… an inadvertent (yet perfectly predictable) PR debacle about alleged censorship. The background is best provided by Dan Wakin in the New York Times, here. Shortly after that came the turn-around (well covered here and here and here) – although Gelb’s “I think [!] I made a mistake” (emphasis mine) confession will hardly undo much of the damage.

When it comes to art, I love boldness – which includes, as its main ingredient, bold failure. Performances that do not try something new or don’t take risks fail by default. This is a much more maddening failure than even the worst performance (or production) that had ambitions either unmet or fatally flawed, but tried.

It is in that sense that I rather admire, from afar, Peter Gelb’s efforts (whether successful or not) to drag the Met into the 20th [sic] century. At least he does something about the staid and stale reputation of the house, at least he shakes a few things up, dares change. I even like that he’s got a pronounced commercial side about him. Art is a product, a special one perhaps, but one that needs selling. (Quality control is another matter.)

I can understand how infuriating ignorant, stupid, or most commonly: lazy negative reviews can be. Even I, perfectly uninvolved with the criticized productions, can get physically ill reading the narrow-minded shlock that parades around as a review yet merely boils down to (and sometimes even admits as much): “This is not how it was done when I grew up, therefore Yuckatypoo!” (Watch for the words “Regietheater” and “Eurotrash” as signifiers of diminished intellectual activity.)

I can also understand the temptation of wanting to do something about such (or in fact any) criticism… were I only in a position to do so.

That’s as far as I can go with Peter Gelb, re: the recent hubbub of trying to strong-arm the Met-affiliated magazine Opera News into being less critical of the mothership. But the criticism of the Met’s productions, specifically but not exclusively its Ring, goes well beyond the narrow minded kind of criticism. And much more importantly, anyone who cannot resist the temptation of squelching criticism (of any kind) only because they can, has no business being in the job Peter Gelb is in. It touches uncomfortably on basic artistic and social principles. The “Free Speech” thing might be overblown, since the Met certainly has the right to bully other economic actors around – and the immediate backlash showed, if anything, how resilient the freedom of opinioneering still is, when properly irritated). And Gelb’s actions are outrageous not primarily for being wrong principally, but for being so counterproductive to the goals he ought to be wanting to achieve.

Even if this latest of several attempts to use the Met’s weight for the purpose of soft self-censorship hadn’t blown up in the institution’s face, it would still have served it all. Honest and sincerely critical reviews are an essential part of a thriving artistic environment. Reviews that hedge, and ache to be friendly, and are all ‘uncritical sunshine’ meanwhile, are worse than no review. They are tedious to read, easy to see through, and dismissed – eventually – even by the densest reader. No artist (since Kubelik) has really ever been severely torpedoed by (undeserved) bad reviews. But arts criticism has already been damaged by shills and PR texts masquerading as honest journalism. To think that expressing (occasional or recurring) negative opinions is harmful to an institution like the Met is spectacularly misguided. They are, in their own small way, part of the essence of vital arts. Vitality, after all, is to-and-fro. Not relying on a sad bunch of yes-men and women.

Then again, Gelb also reminded Opera News readers that they are not an independent magazine and that their reviews of the Met really shouldn’t be expected to be fair and unbiased in the first place (even if they were). Their continued coverage of the Met (perhaps ‘a little more careful now’, or, less likely, with increased vigor) is a small, gratifying victory for the magazine’s readers and perhaps other institutions that Gelb will think twice about trying to convince to alter the tone of their coverage, but it won’t make Opera News an inherently independent objective source.

None of this alters the fact that the duty to distinguish between a shill and sufficiently independent reviews (never mind the actual quality of the writing or expressed opinion) still lies with the reader. In that sense Gelb’s Opera News moment, including the backlash, was about choice, not quality control or editorial independence.

Opera on DVD: 'Ariadne' at the Met

R. Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos, D. Voigt, N. Dessay, Metropolitan Opera, J. Levine (released on September 28, 2010) Virgin 6418679 5 | 2h14

No matter that Ariadne auf Naxos may be the oddest work to come forth from the partnership of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hoffmannsthal. For one thing, its libretto is one of the works in which composer and librettist deconstruct the nature of the operatic genre, as a result of serious revision of the originally planned idea. The score is delightful, as long as there is the right combination of singers, conductor, and orchestra -- even when everything is not quite right, as can be attested in performances of varying levels of success, reviewed at Washington National Opera (2009), Wolf Trap (2008), and Covent Garden (2008). This DVD version from the Metropolitan Opera is certainly one to own: it was filmed in 2003 but was released only last year, due (at least by rumor) to some unresolved legal issues. Whatever the reason, opera lovers should rejoice that it was finally made available, as part of the 40th anniversary set for James Levine.

Levine, whose recent health troubles have been felt keenly in many places, was in top form at the podium, leading a well-etched performance from the Met Orchestra, where he may not remain for much longer, according to recent news. The Big House in New York assembled what can only be called a casting d'enfer. This production represented Natalie Dessay's first performances after surgery to repair vocal nodes, and she is dramatically and vocally a near-perfect Zerbinetta, not least for a stunning Großmächtige Prinzessin!. In the title role, there is Deborah Voigt before her bariatric surgery, in buttery voice and giving a hilarious diva send-up, with Canadian tenor Richard Margison not quite her match vocally as the Tenor/Bacchus. (A London performance of this role involved the infamous black dress that Voigt could not fit into, but given a choice between this Voigt and a lesser but trimmer singer, Voigt would get my vote every time -- just avoid the close-ups, which is not how opera is meant to be viewed anyway.) Susanne Mentzer is intense and edgy as Der Komponist, with the highest notes on the boundary of total control, in an exciting way. There are pleasing supporting performances from Wolfgang Brendel's Music Master and Tony Stevenson as a bright-toned, slightly fey Dancing Master, and Nathan Gunn is a flirtatious Harlekin, if not exactly a voice that sounds like a natural Straussian.

The staging, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, is pretty, if a little odd at points, not least because of the crowds of distracting supernumeraries, who disturb the action in ways made worse by the camera focusing on them so much. The first act takes place in a crowded and complicated basement room where preparations are happening, but the second act, for the performance of the mash-up of serious German opera and Italian buffo farce, is much grander. Michael Yeargan's sets and costumes are colorful and bright, with multicolored diamond patterns for Harlekin and Zerbinetta. It was an especially odd choice to have the three naiads roll around on tall platforms that look like mountainous, sunset-vista dresses they are wearing: the staging may account for some of the less than unified ensemble among the trio. Most importantly, none of the nonsense, allowing the comic part of the opera to sparkle, prevents the viewer from taking the operatic part seriously as Strauss seems to have intended. The sound is generally good, although the microphone placement leaves something to be desired: at one point when Dessay turns around while singing, her part is lost almost completely.

Fatto, Matto, Quid Pro Quo

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Mozart, by and for kids
Washington Post, November 9, 2009

Among the many offerings of the Kids Euro Festival was a free performance of Mozart's singspiel "Bastien und Bastienne," presented Saturday morning by the Austrian Embassy. As the capacity crowd of children and their adults arrived, magician David Morey was ingeniously on hand to keep young minds engaged until the performance began.

The opera, written when Mozart was 12, offers glimpses of the greater achievements to come. The most memorable number, "Diggi, daggi, schurry, murry," is given to Colas, a self-proclaimed magician who helps reunite the eponymous twin-named young lovers. Baritone Steven Scheschareg, the only adult in the cast, scored a big hit with this silly aria of fake magic words, peering over his tome of imagined arcana at the wide-eyed children gathered at the front of the room. As Bastien and Bastienne, treble Noah Winston Donahue, 13 (Mozart actually wrote the role for a tenor), and soprano Katherine Mariko Murray, 17, sang with composure and confidence, with the assistance of capricious amplification. [Continue reading]

Mozart, Bastien und Bastienne
Presented by the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Embassy Series
Kids Euro Festival
Embassy of Austria

Luc Bondy Sounds Off

Many readers may be tired of hearing about the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Tosca, the one that caused Luc Bondy to be soundly booed on opening night, propelling it into far more media coverage than it probably deserved. As a preview of today's high-definition screening of the production, in cinemas around the world, including some in France, Renaud Machart published an interview with the embattled Swiss director (Luc Bondy : "'Tosca' n'est pas un mythe, c'est un thriller", October 10), in Le Monde (my translation):

Did the Met offer you Tosca or was it you who suggested it?

Peter Gelb, the director of the Met, had offered me something else that I had turned down. I let him know that I would love to direct Tosca, an opera that, like my father, I adore. He had a verbal commitment with another director, who finally agreed to give it up. We decided to do it.

Does Mr. Gelb micromanage?

He takes a keen interest but never interferes. He asks questions when he does not understand what I want to do. For example, he found that the staging was a little too much in the darkness. We worked on that issue. Still, his support was unfailing when, even before the first performance, in the Met's administrative board meeting, people were offended that I had someone embrace the Virgin Mary in the first act and that there were prostitutes in the second. No one is shocked that Scarpia is a bloodthirsty torturer, but on the other hand if he is shown as an active lecher, as it is written in Sardou's original play, that is a problem. People think Tosca is a myth when it is really a heavily sadistic and erotic thriller.

Have you encountered this kind of problem elsewhere?

Nowhere else, and I have never been booed like that. I would understand that attitude if I was interpreting the work by distorting it. But these things are in the play and in the libretto! Have these censors read them before they protest like that?

Your friend Gerard Mortier, former head of the Opéra de Paris, rolled his eyes when he learned that you were directing Tosca...

He is not the only one who does not like Puccini. When I speak to my colleague Peter Sellars about Puccini, he says that he cannot get through more than a few measures. I do not understand that ostracism, no more than I understand it with Tchaikovsky. I do not like these judgments between good and bad taste, these classes that people perceive. I just like being involved with works that shake things up. That is interesting.

Vive la Différence: Luc Bondy

Marcelo Álvarez as Cavaradossi at canvas of Mary Magdalen, Tosca, directed by Luc Bondy, Metropolitan Opera, 2009 (photo by Mary Altaffer/AP)

As mentioned on Sunday French critic Renaud Machart was in New York this weekend. After covering the opening of the New York Philharmonic season, Machart attended the gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera and the controversial new production of Puccini's Tosca by Luc Bondy. The booing in the house was reportedly intense, and the caterwauling in the press and the blogs afterward has been even more so. By contrast, in his review (L'exemplaire "Tosca" de Luc Bondy, soirée d'opéra parfaite, huée à New York, September 24) for Le Monde, Machart wrote of a "perfect night at the opera" (my translation, Italian quotations, and links added):

Tosca [was] presented in a gala evening before a trendy audience (where furs, haute couture gowns, and altered noses were in abundance), causing a terrible stir, a vengeful booing from the heart of an audience furious that "its" Tosca had been taken away. The one it has seen on the Met stage since 1985, concocted by the Italien Franco Zeffirelli. Because the Met audience, or at least its noisy majority, wants a Tosca in CinémaScope, with its Baroque church in the first act, its Palazzo Farnese in the second, and in the third its Castel Sant'Angelo, with that impossible view of St. Peter's and the Vatican. One suspects that many in the audience have never visited Rome, read the libretto of Luigi Illica, or read the play by Victorien Sardou, but, offended, they want a Tosca in line with how they picture it, and that's what they pay for.

It is true that Zeffirelli's production is the exact opposite of that made by Bondy and his talented designer, Richard Peduzzi. In visual contrast with the Italian and his orange sunrise in Act III in particular, Bondy preferred a simple tower and a sky of an opaque blue-gray, the color of blueness in one's soul, the tint of despair in a condemned man. Above all, he has transcribed the exact color of Puccini's orchestra at the moment of the bells that announce Cavaradossi's execution, the hue that the libretto describes as "a light uncertain and gray" (la luce incerta e grigia che precede l'alba). Therein lies the problem: the opera audience often takes false traditions as primary truths and confuses abusive reinterpretations (they are legion, it is true, on operatic stages) with respect for the letter of the law. One saw spectators getting offended that Tosca, in Act II, sang her famous aria Vissi d'arte seated on a sofa. But what does the libretto say? "Tosca falls, spent, on the couch" (Tosca affranta dal dolore si lascia cadere sul canapè).

A wave of indignation was perceived when, in Act II of this production in 19th-century costumes, Art Deco furniture appeared, suggesting with elegance and discretion that Scarpia, the chief of police, had some traits in common with Mussolini. Is it so wrong to show Scarpia with three prostitutes when he says, literally, that he wants to have a taste of different wines and different women (Dio creò diverse beltà e vini diversi... Io vo' gustar quanto più posso dell'opra divina!) and when Sardou, in his play, denounces the morals of this "filthy satyr," bloodthirsty even in his orgies?

No mention of the technical problems that spoiled the opera's dramatic conclusion. Machart does note that this is the first season at the Met completely under the Gelb aegis and that it is "a season marked by novelty (nine new productions, a number last attained in 1966) and audacity because he is bringing to New York some European directors who have never mounted an opera there, notably Patrice Chéreau and Luc Bondy." Perhaps Martin Bernheimer had the best criticism of the production, admitting first that he loathed that tired, old Zeffirelli production before also admitting that he loathed Bondy's version just as much.

Return of Monteverdi

Monteverdi, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, Les Arts Florissants, W. Christie (released on February 24, 2004) Virgin Classics 7243 4 90613 9 2

Claudio Monteverdi settled in Venice, as maestro di cappella at San Marco, but was not to return to the genre of opera until a couple years before his death. It was in 1640 at the Teatro di SS. Giovanni e Paolo, the wildly successful Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria: it was, as Ellen Rosand notes in her extremely valuable book on Monteverdi's last three operas, "not only the first, but also the last Venetian opera to be heard in successive seasons throughout the entire seventeenth century" (Monteverdi's Last Operas, p. 7). Although the work was revived earlier in the 20th century, it was the production led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, an anniversary commemorated a few years with a new DVD from the Zurich Opera, that really put this opera back on the map. Harnoncourt even made his own realization of the score based on the skeletal manuscript, in the hand of a copyist and not Monteverdi, now in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Wolf Trap Opera has selected the work for its second staged production (Kim Pensinger Witman, showing exceptionally good taste, admits that Monteverdi is one of her favorite composers). The production opens tonight, the photos look great, and we expect it to be the best part of that company's season.

In preparation for my review, it was good to revisit this recent performance by Les Arts Florissants, from the 2002 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, now available on DVD. Monteverdi's opera was first performed at the Teatro di SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice in February 1640, one of the early pieces that helped set the course of commercial opera in Venice in the mid-17th century, although Rosand notes that that development was already well under way when Monteverdi came on the scene. Giacomo Badoaro, a Venetian nobleman and member of the Accademia degli Incogniti, one of whose goals was to revive the classical Greek tragedy (and, according to Rosand, "the exploitation of history for political purposes"), wrote the libretto, apparently in the hopes of luring Monteverdi back into opera composition. The story is drawn from Books 13 to 23 of Homer's Odyssey, with an allegorical prologue that shows the figure of Human Frailty as the plaything of Time, Fortune, and Love, which helpfully instructs the audience in the opera's three ultimate lessons about the things one is unlikely to be able to change in life.

Ellen Rosand, Monteverdi's Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy (University of California Press, 2007) Preview on Google Books

Adrian Noble's production is admirably clear and beautiful, with terra cotta vases and orange sand evoking Ithaca (sets and costumes by Anthony Ward) and a few simple stage effects for some of the ancillary scenes, like an ingenious triangle of billowing fabric for the sail of the Phaeacians who bring Ulisse to his homeland and a blue-lit one over which Minerva flies with Telemaco on a suspended pole. The character of L'Umana Fragilità is memorably incarnated by the vulnerable nakedness and tiny thread of voice of countertenor Rachid ven Abdeslam, although as a teacher who sometimes shows opera DVDs to young students, that puts this production off the list for showing to middle or high schoolers. Rosand confirms that this allegorical character is quite rare in 17th-century opera libretti, although Cesare Ripa does describe Human Frailty in his celebrated Iconologia as "an old, afflicted woman, poorly dressed, with an emaciated face, holding icicles in her hand that symbolize the fragility of human life" (p. 137).

In a nice bonus on this DVD, William Christie gives a ten-minute interview, from the pit, about the opera, in which he describes, among other things, how he did not think it appropriate to cast all of the roles in this work with major voices. In keeping with that aim, the lead roles are all vocally quite striking, while the supporting cast and chorus are hit and miss. The striking mezzo-soprano Marijana Mijanović is perfect as long-suffering Penelope, her unusual voice, admired in Floridante and other recordings, matched by an unquestionably regal stage presence. So much of the dramatic weight rests on Penelope, making the role crucial to the success of the opera in many ways. Mijanović's husband, the Croatian tenor Krešimir Špicer, is a convincing Ulisse, although eclipsed in many ways by the vocally and dramatically amazing Olga Pitarch as Minerva (and completely different as Amore in the prologue and when disguised as the shepherd). Tenor Cyril Auvity, whom we last heard in Christie's most recent performance in Washington (in 2004 -- sob!), was in as sweet and guileless a voice as we remembered, nowhere more than in the touching duet of father and son, as Telemaco is reunited with Ulisse. There are other worthy performances, if not necessarily for their vocal qualities.


The only real drawback of this version, in terms of what Ulisse to own if you want to own only one, is the sound (video direction by Humphrey Burton). The camera work involves a lot of closeups, which adds to the intimacy of the setting (the small theater of the Jeu de Paume at Aix-en-Provence), but the microphones return a sound that is too varied, as singers move in and out of range. It may be realistic in terms of preserving the sense of watching a staged opera, but for anyone primarily interested in hearing the music, it is very frustrating to have to set the volume far above what should be required just to hear the singers. For the record, Christie uses Alan Curtis's edition of the opera, published by Novello in 2002; Rinaldo Alessandrini also made an edition for Bärenreiter in 2007, which leaves the matter of instrumentation unresolved but has more suggestions of figures added in the continuo line. Any performance of the opera is going to involve significant reconstruction.

Rosand draws many connections between Ulisse and Monteverdi's penultimate opera, Le nozze d'Enea in Lavinia, which has no surviving musical sources. She describes them as part of a trilogy about Venice as the divinely appointed successor to Rome, thus tracing epic history from the Trojan War to the voyage of Aeneas to found Rome. The same legend about the founding of Venice was referenced in other operas produced in La Serenissima in the 17th century, by Giulio Strozzi and others. Rosand argues that by analogy, Monteverdi's last opera, L'Incoronazione di Poppea, is the last in a trilogy, although Monteverdi never explicitly called them a trilogy, and its story relates to the downfall of Rome, the last act of Venice's ascendancy.

174'

Summer Opera: Castleton Festival 1

(L to R) Harry Risoleo (Miles), Rachel Calloway (Mrs. Grose), Charlotte Dobbs (the Governess), and Kirby Anne Hall (Flora) in The Turn of the Screw, Châteauville Foundation (photo by Nicholas Vaughan)

The area's newest summer opera festival, the Castleton Festival, opened on Friday night at Lorin Maazel's estate in Rappahannock County, Virginia. This festival's model, if indeed it has one, is likely Glyndebourne: an improbable location far into the countryside where city-dwelling opera lovers would come on pilgrimage to get away from it all. As the roads became narrower and narrower on the drive to Castleton Farms, the location of Maazel's Châteauville Foundation, the clean air and rural smells flowed through the car window. As I waited for the curtain of the festival's first production, Britten's Turn of the Screw (libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on the novella by Henry James), the sound of cows lowing and frogs croaking wafted over the pond behind Festival House. Surrounded by a menagerie of animals -- a camel (named Omar and fond of matzo), a zebra, and the fabled zonkey (the zebra's offspring with a donkey) -- Maazel reigns here like Prospero on his island, directing young performers he invites to mount productions of chamber operas.

Maazel has been hosting concerts in his home for over a decade, but he first came onto the Ionarts radar when a chamber opera production sponsored by the Châteauville Foundation suddenly appeared on the schedule of the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater back in 2005. Not quite sure what to expect, both Jens and yours truly showed up and were very impressed by that bone-chilling performance of The Turn of the Screw. Maazel decided not to revive that sinister staging, by director Barbara Eckle and choreographer Abigail Levine, instead entrusting a new staging to William Kerley, recently appointed as the festival's Resident Stage Director. It took advantage of the unusual shapes and details of the smaller Festival House stage, with Miss Jessel and Peter Quint serenading the children from the rail of the balcony. The single set backdrop (sets and costumes by Nicholas Vaughan) established the predominant tone of black color, with a large window and columns that moved back and forth, adding to the possessed, claustrophobic feel of this incarnation of Bly Manor. A black arch framed the proscenium, echoed by a narrow walkway that extended the stage space around the pit, which also served as Bly Park's lake.

Charlotte Dobbs (the Governess) in The Turn of the Screw, Châteauville Foundation (photo by Nicholas Vaughan)

At the top of the young cast was the Flora of Kirby Anne Hall, singing with a convincing child-like tone (which did much to strengthen the sound of her Miles when they sang together) and acting with commitment and an intensely sinister face. She was matched well by the ghoulish Miss Jessel of Greta Ball, who with her sharp and present voice was much more insidious in this production than Quint, rising up like a viperous specter from a patch of reeds (the only time the hair on my arms stood on end) and again, her hair dripping, from the lake-pit in Act II. The Quint of Steven Ebel was rounded and suave more than particularly evil, although one might suspect that, given Britten's attachment to teenage boys, the role might have some ambiguities. The Miles of St. Alban's student Harry Risoleo, while admirably composed and glowingly sung (the Malo aria was boyishly sweet), seemed curiously detached, deflating some of the opera's most anxious moments.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Coming Up Big in a Tiny Space (Washington Post, July 6) Tim Smith, Castleton Festival on Lorin Maazel's Virginia estate opens with compelling 'Turn of the Screw' (Clef Notes, July 6) Philip Kennicott, The Debut of the Castelton Festival (Philip Kennicott, July 6)

The dryness of the theater, perhaps affected unfavorably by the addition of the proscenium and walkway, seemed to expose the voice of Charlotte Dobbs as the Governess, although that timorous quality also suited the character's neurotic hysteria, which she captured beautifully. Dobbs's knowledge of the role did not seem all that secure either, with at least one false entrance and numerous others prevented only by the firm gesture of Maazel's cue hand. She had a strong counterweight in the vocally stout Mrs. Grose of Rachel Calloway. Thirteen young musicians from the Royal College of Music in London gave a mostly smooth reading of this complex score, an extended set of variations growing from the theme presented in the prologue. For the first time in the history of Festival House, a real (spinet) piano was somehow hoisted down into the pit (the harp, timpani, and tubular bells must have been hard enough). All in all, it was not the stunning experience of that first Turn of the Screw in 2005, but it was a fine opening to three weeks of Britten's chamber operas.

This opera will be repeated this evening (July 4, 5 pm) and tomorrow afternoon (July 5, 2 pm). Today's performance is the crowning moment of an Independence Day Open House at the Castleton Festival, with chamber music performances, food and activities, and post-opera fireworks and dancing.

Thus Do All Women

Mozart, Così fan tutte, J. Watson, D. Montague, T. Spence, C. Maltman, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, C. Mackerras (released on April 29, 2008) Chandos 3152(3)

Every opera lover should own at least one recording of Mozart's Così fan tutte, an opera that may not rank all that high on the list of the composer's "important" operas but that remains one of the most enjoyable and beloved of audiences -- ranked as the 15th most often performed opera in North America. (My review of Wolf Trap Opera's new production will be published tomorrow). The best version to own remains the revelatory and authoritative recording made by René Jacobs in 2004. In the category of secondary performances of Così that are worth a listen, the great Mozart conductor Charles Mackerras returned to the opera for a second recording in 2007. It is unusual because he made it with the historically informed performance ensemble the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Also, the singers use not the Italian original but -- for Chandos's Opera in English series -- a clever, slightly twee English translation made by the Rev. Marmaduke E. Browne for an 1890 production by the students of the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford.

Mackerras has a generally fine cast, especially on the male side, with the ardent tenor of Toby Spence's Ferrando and the robust baritone of Christopher Maltman's Guglielmo balanced by the veteran weight of Thomas Allen's Don Alfonso. The women are led by the vivacious Lesley Garrett as a witty and slightly zany Despina, against whom Janice Watson and Diana Montague seem a little nondescript as Fiordiligi and Dorabella, respectively. The OAE sounds gorgeous and full of colors, especially in the woodwinds (so important in this orchestration), led with a sprightly hand by Mackerras. Other HIP touches include the use of a fortepiano to accompany the recitatives (although the critical edition indicates "cembalo" -- or harpsichord), as well as ornaments for the singers transcribed from an 18th-century source (now in the Fürstenberg Library in Donaueschingen).

Another argument against recommending this as a reference recording is that it does not include the complete score, making the usual cuts in most staged performances (Don Alfonso's Vorrei dir, e cor non ho, the Ferrando-Guglielmo duet Al fato dan legge, Ferrando's aria Ah lo veggio -- although the OAE certainly has the basset clarinet called for in that piece -- and some parts of the recitatives). Guglielmo also sings Non siate ritrosi, as is customary, instead of the more difficult Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo Mozart originally composed as the opera's fifteenth number, deciding to cut it before the premiere.

160'34"

Tamerlano from Madrid

Handel, Tamerlano, P. Domingo, M. Bacelli, S. Mingardo, J. Holloway, Teatro Real de Madrid, P. McCreesh (released on April 28, 2009) Opus Arte OP 1006 D YouTube videos

Plácido Domingo continues to take on new roles in a career that may be slowing but has not yet stopped. One of the best of the most recent roles was a sympathetic portrayal of the Ottoman emperor Bajazet, in Handel's Tamerlano, debuted at Madrid's Teatro Real last year. We had the chance to hear Domingo in this opera at Washington National Opera shortly afterward, albeit in a less interesting production. The stylish but quirky one directed by Graham Vick for Madrid has now been released on DVD. Hugh Canning, in a live review of the Madrid staging, aptly described Domingo's take on the role of Bajazet as "Lear-like," as the aged ruler imprisoned and humiliated by the Tartar emperor Timur Lenk. Domingo may not have fully memorized the role and his handling of Baroque musical demands may have left something to be desired, but in his inimitable way Domingo inhabited this role and made it pack quite an emotional punch.

Vick created the production for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino earlier in the decade, and its stylish minimalism reminds one of the Willy Decker La Traviata or the Alden brothers' Baroque stagings. The basic backdrop is a gently curved wall, starkly white, with some pieces that rotate almost unnoticed, around the top of the wall where supernumerary figures appear and a small circle on stage. Above the stage for much of the production hovers a large white globe, under which Bajazet first appears, crushed but slowly lifting it upward. The imagery of Atlas may be what Vick had in mind, but the meaning is more likely related to the enormous sculpted foot that forces the globe back down from the top, bringing to mind the footstool image -- Timur Lenk was rumored to have forced his royal prisoner to serve as his footstool, a story that Handel's libretto recalls when Tamerlano tries to make Asteria to step on her humiliated father to ascend to the throne as his bride. It was a common humiliation applied to foes in the Middle East: even the God of the Old Testament promised to do it to the enemies of the Hebrews:

Dixit Dominus Domino meo, sede a dextris meis: donec ponam inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum.

The Lord said to my lord, sit on my right: while I shall place your enemies as a stool for your feet. (Psalm 110:1)

Some of the brightly colored costumes and turbans at times are a nod to the Mughals, the dynasties descended from Timur Lenk's Persianization of Afghanistan and northern India, with Irene even arriving in Act I on an enormous blue elephant. Mostly, however, the staging is a neutral backdrop, which misses the point of Baroque opera, in which really incredible singers mostly stood in place and sang difficult, pyrotechnical music in lavish sets and costumes, complete with incredible set effects. Vick also directs the singers in some particularly stylized, often insipid actions (the "high school show choir" hand movements that Peter Sellars also inflicts on his singers), especially Monica Bacelli's otherwise vocally splendid Tamerlano. The singing is quite good, although the Washington cast was in some ways better: Ingela Bohlin's shining if not immaculate Asteria was on par with Sarah Coburn, while Sara Mingardo's loamy voice and intense stage presence were bettered by Patricia Bardon's Andronico. Most of all, David Daniels nailed the loathsome arrogance of Tamerlano much more than Monica Bacelli, who was above all just not that convincingly male in her movement (an alto castrato created the role, after all).


Ingela Bohlin (Asteria) and Sara Mingardo (Andronico), Act III duet
(Vivo in te) from Tamerlano, Teatro Real, directed by Graham Vick
Where the Madrid production convincingly beats what we heard in Washington is the sound of the orchestra, because of the presence of a real Handel authority, conductor Paul McCreesh, in the pit. His strings and wind players are members of the resident band, the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, but he brought in his continuo group (harpsichord, Baroque cello, and theorbo) from the Gabrieli Consort to add some specialist touches (plus traversi and recorders, although apparently not played by specialists). The performance does not follow the newest critical score of HWV 18 but mixes in some of the music from other versions of the score (a couple recitatives and one of Asteria's arias cut from Act II, and similar cuts in Act III, but with Su la sponda added and the concluding scene after Bajazet's suicide). McCreesh explains the version of the score, chosen mostly by Vick and not necessarily what McCreesh would have used otherwise, in a short interview added here as bonus material. Even for three DVDs the price is steep, but the value of this production as a document in one of the most distinguished operatic singing careers, now drawing near its close, speaks for itself.

217'28"

Christmas Addendum: Hansel and Gretel

E. Humperdinck, Hansel and Gretel, C. Schäfer, A. Coote, P. Langridge, Metropolitan Opera, V. Jurowski (released on September 16, 2008) EMI Classics DVD 50999 2 06308 9 8

Master Ionarts loved the production of Hansel and Gretel, Humperdinck's Christmas chestnut, a "holiday tradition" from the Washington National Opera that apparently did not get off the ground. That sweet, somewhat homespun production, perfect for children, could not be farther from the dark vision of the opera directed by Richard Jones, originally for Welsh National Opera, and recorded for DVD from the digital broadcast on New Year's Day 2008. The family lives in a grimy, paint-peeling, Communist-tinged hovel that could serve as a set for Wozzeck (sets and costumes by John MacFarlane). Alan Held's Father seems unbalanced and abusive, and Rosalind Plowright's Mother, desperate and dark at the roots, at one point begins to swallow a handful of pills. Later she eats greedily from the food her husband brings home, actually vomiting it back up into the sink when she realizes that her children are actually in danger. It may be a Hansel and Gretel for the age of the financial crisis, but Mrs. Ionarts and I are keeping this one away from the children.

That being said, for adults it is an ingenious reading of the opera, showing the desperation of the poverty-stricken and the rapacious forces that combine to endanger children. The performances are uniformly fine, from the Gretel of Christine Schäfer and the convincingly boyish Hansel of Alice Coote, radiantly lovely together in the prayer duet. Was that really the lovely Sasha Cooke made up to look like a terrifying serial killer Sandman? The theme of hunger is beautifully transformed into a dream feast the children see instead of the 14 guardian angels, with huge-headed chefs setting the table and a fish-headed maître d' who seats them at the banquet. The surrealistic tone continues in the second act, when the witch's home appears not as a gingerbread house but a howling, bloody mouth that vomits up desserts to tempt the children. Philip Langridge is positively brilliant as a fiendish Julia Child in drag, force-feeding Hansel through a funnel and tube like a goose for pâté. ("The opera is about starvation and cannibalism, and when people are hungry they dream of food," Jones has said.) Fittingly, Vladimir Jurowski has a moody turn at the podium, a Mephistophelian Abbé Liszt in quasi-clerical collar, driving the opera to its conclusion, in which the children's chorus gathers around the blackened corpse of the witch, beating hungrily with knives and forks on the table.

121'

Bringing Tosca to the People

'Tosca'
Washington Post, July 14, 2008

Puccini, Tosca
American Center for Puccini Studies
Kay Krekow (Tosca), Harry Dunstan (Cavaradossi), Bryan Jackson (Scarpia)
Rockville Christian Church

Sasha Cooke's NMWA Recital

Sasha Cooke Showcases Vocal, Emotional Range
Washington Post, May 23, 2008

Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano) and Pei-Yao Wang (piano)
Songs by de Falla, Norman, and Schumann
National Museum of Women in the Arts

Opera on DVD: Alice in Wonderland

Available at Amazon: Unsuk Chin, Alice in Wonderland, S. Matthews, G. Jones, Bayerische Staatsoper, K. Nagano (released April 29, 2008) Unitel Classica / Medici Arts 2072418

We have been fairly impressed with the music of Korean composer Unsuk Chin, especially her song cycle Akrostichon-Wortspiel. When both Jens and Alex Ross wrote admiringly of her latest opera, Alice in Wonderland (both with a few reservations), it was clear one had to get to know the work. Happily this DVD, made during the premiere run at the Bavarian State Opera last summer, has just crossed my desk. The music is just as described in reviews of the premiere, a mélange of atonal sounds (often recalling Chin's teacher Ligeti) and more traditional harmonic passages. A vast orchestra, spilling out from the pit to surrounding boxes in the theater according to Jens, interweaves myriad colored threads in often unexpected ways.

Sally Matthews (Alice) and Stefan Schneider (Caterpillar) in Alice in Wonderland, Bavarian State Opera, 2007 (photo by Wilfried Hösl)

The sonic allusions include, among other things, spectralism, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and swing. The caterpillar, who speaks his lines through words that flash around him in a circle, plays an extended, bluesy solo on the bass clarinet. It is every bit as surreal and hallucinatory as Lewis Carroll's stories -- written, let us not forget, as an expression of an older minister's odd attraction to and obsession with an 11-year-old girl.

Even more striking, if possible, is the stylish, outlandish staging directed and designed by Achim Freyer (more pictures and videos here). It is abstract, with characters relating to one another indirectly, from separate parts of the geometrically divided set. The stage is mostly a dark background for the colorful masks worn by some characters and the otherworldly puppets, all created by Nina Weitzner, with influences from schizophrenic artists and other Art Brut styles. Some of the strangest images are seen at the open and close of the opera, where Chin and her librettist, David Henry Hwang, altered Carroll's story.

Sally Matthews in Alice in Wonderland, Bavarian State Opera, 2007 (photo by Wilfried Hösl)

Alice does not come from and exit to 19th-century England: she visits Wonderland by way of the composer's own dreams. Before Alice falls through a hole to get to Wonderland, she is menaced by two men, portrayed by large-headed puppets with phallic noses. At the end of the opera, an invisible man tells Alice to plant seeds in the dead, hard ground. When she does so, flowers sprout up and a bright light fills the stage. Sally Matthews is a piercing, girlish Alice, remarkably singing through the oversized mask for most of the opera. Other fine singing comes from countertenor Andrew Watts (White Rabbit), Piia Komsi (Cheshire Cat), and the redoubtable Gwyneth Jones (Queen of Hearts).

The only misfortune about this DVD is in how the performance was captured on video. Instead of allowing the viewer to see mostly from the perspective of the spectator in the theater, video director Ellen Fellmann has the cameras focus too exclusively in close-up on the puppets and performers. This not only draws too much attention to the fakeness of the materials but also spoils the overall effect of the dream-like staging. Worse, overused camera effects like hand-held zoom and rack focus transitions make for a ham-handed attempt to skew the surreal quality of the production, when that was hardly necessary. After watching it once, I preferred afterward just to listen to the sound.