Critic’s Notebook: A Flying Dutchman from the Budapest Opera

R.Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer F.Fricsay, RIAS SOB DG/Eloquence

R.Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer F.Konwitschny, StaKap Berlin Berlin Classics

R.Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer D.Barenboim, StaKap Berlin Teldec/Warner

A Pleasing-Enough Dutchman

The point was to come to Budapest and witness the Hungarian Premiere of Nixon in China, but en passant it only seemed fitting to stop by the opera house proper (Nixon took place in a different venue) for a Flying Dutchman. It was celebrating its 140th birthday and, owing to it having been shut down for several years for comprehensive renovation work until its re-opening in 2022, I had never actually been. High time to change that, after all, it’s one of the finest examples of the neo-Renaissance style, a jewel among opera houses, perfectly sized (unless you want to make money with it), and now glowing again in its new-old splendour that had (allegedly) elicited the congratulatory grumble from Emperor Franz Joseph I at its opening that he “prescribed it to be smaller than the opera house in Vienna” but should also have “decreed that it not be more beautiful”. And indeed, it’s a truly grand opera house, all gilded, marbled, satined, and candelabraed. And yet just small enough to be intimate. (Far away enough to be ignored by the Western press, you’d think it’s the ideal stage for trying out new rôles for ambitious singers.)

So the Flying Dutchman it was. Earlier that day, a matinee of Carmen had already been produced… and apparently exhausted the Budapestian’s hunger for opera that day: The attendance was somewhere between “low” and “pitiful”, but certainly below 50% capacity of the roughly 1000 comfortable seats (fitted with subtitle screens) that the new post-renovation arrangement provides. What the hardy Wagnerians got was a fine Dutchman with some good singing in a production by János Szikora that means to offend no one or maybe just doesn’t mean much at all. The costumes (Kriszta Berzsenyi) are toned down, except for the slightly more elaborate getups of Senta and the Dutchman (a red dress and coat, respectively, with matching concentric yellow and orange circles painted on them) and a brief appearance of the Dutch sailor’s chorus as clunky papier-mâché zombies. Incidentally, that was the production’s only veritable failure. When the Norwegians call on, invite, and tease the Dutchman’s crew, their delayed, eventual response is supposed to be positively overwhelming. Various directors have come up with variously successful means of creating that effect. Amplification of the voices, as done here, is often among them. But then it should really be overwhelming. Here, it was an electronically distorted whimper that never got particularly loud and certainly never intimidating. A damp squib. The cowering visible chorus on stage was shivering for no reason.

Everywhere else, the production did not stand in the way of the music or the singing, which some more conservative audiences (for whatever that’s worth) might consider a good quality. The set by Éva Szendrényi is highly economical; two, three props (large ropes, a large frame, a loom) and otherwise it’s an empty stage, framed by frames with fabric stretched across them, doubling as a projection screen and revolving doors for getting all the seamen on and off the stage.

The singing had a few positive surprises in store. András Palerdi’s was a very pleasantly understated Daland, subtle, with good pronunciation. A bit on the soft side but never trying to overcompensate. Like his Steersman, István Horváth, who seems a fine all-purpose character tenor, à la Kevin Conners, he could be easily found on any international stage in that rôle. Anna Kissjudit’s Mary with a huge, natural, controlled voice that easily rang throughout the round was quite

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Leise Rieselt der Kunstschnee: Latest @ Wiener Zeitung

"Eugen Onegin": Leise rieselt der Kunstschnee

Tschaikowskis Klassiker ist an die Staatsoper zurückgekehrt.

Wasserstandsmeldung von der 51. Aufführung des derzeitigen "Eugen Onegin" an der Staatsoper. Im inzwischen zehnten Jahr hat man sich an die "hässlichen Bilder von Falk Richter" (Daniel Wagner) gewöhnt: Pittoresk und leise dauer-rieselt der zentnerweise angekarrte, Jahreszeiten-ignorierende Kunstschnee. Kaltblau-hübsch schimmern die Eisgebilde à la Eispalast in "James Bond - Stirb an einem anderen Tag". Und alle Mannen und Damen im (recht ordentlichen) Chor frieren einfach ein, wenn dem Regisseur nichts Besseres einfällt. Das ist praktisch, aber ein wenig einfallslos, um nicht zu sagen faul. Die unmotivierten Salti und das gekünstelte Party-Gehabe der Ballett-Statisterie ebenso, dito das Klischee Russland ist gleich Winter....

Von Katrin Hofmanns Bühne dominiert, wirkt diese sparsame Regie unterkühlt; sie trägt die Oper nicht. Es fehlt an Einsichten in die Familien- und Gesellschaftsdynamik... [weiterlesen]

On ClassicsToday: Rusalka at Theater an der Wien (Review & Production Photos)

Between Thursday, September 19th and September 30th, the Theater and der Wien put on Rusalka, conducted by David Afkham and directed by Amélie Niermeyer. The ClassicsToday review is (finally) up.Production Details on the TadW's website.

ClassicsToday: Rusalka Gets Wet Feet In Vienna

More pictures from the production below.

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On ClassicsToday: Checking Out The Budapest Orchestral Scene Part III

Jenő Koppándi & Zsolt Hamar

For my ongoing survey of Budapest’s orchestral scene, I picked out an all-Bartók evening with the Hungarian National Philharmonic after having heard a great Concerto Budapest concert and the Hungarian RSO in the Ring. The National Philharmonic came to (Western) fame under its longtime director János Ferencsik and again when it was led for two decades by Zoltán Kocsis until the latter’s death in 2016. The ambitious bill on this season-opening night included the Two Portraits Op. 5, the Third Piano Concerto, and Bluebeard’s Castle for the main course. Fab stuff, mosty:

All-Bartók Season-Opener With The Hungarian National Philharmonic

Below are a few photos from the concert to go with that review.

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Latest on Forbes: This is Your Brain on Parsifal; A Viennese Clunker from Alvis Hermanis

Parsifal At The Vienna State Opera: A Set In Lieu Of A Production

Parsifal around Easter is a lovely tradition. Especially when enjoyed with a good friend. But not every production is worth keeping up with that tradition.

Indeed, architect Otto Wagner is cannibalized for all the sets, whether it’s a more or less straight reproduction of the St. Leopold church up above the Steinhof area or bastardizations of other Otto Wagner visuals. The Karlsplatz subway station entry is emblazoned not with its own name but with the typographic decoration “Die Zeit” which Wagner designed for the telegraph office of the former Viennese newspaper of that name. Why? Because “Die Zeit” is mentioned twice in the libretto in that act. That’s all the depth there’s to it. Catch it if you can; if not, you’re no worse off for it.

This way to the full review: Parsifal At The Vienna State Opera: A Set In Lieu Of A Production

[From the Archives] A Wonderland of Possibilities: Unsuk Chin’s First Opera Premiered in Munich

Originally published on WETA 90.9's blog,Sunday, 8.5.07

“If there’s no meaning in it, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we need not try to find any.”

This quote from the King in Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” might well describe the general listener’s absolution from the trouble of actively engaging with modern music.

Unsuk Chin, Alice in Wonderland K.Nagano / BStOp / Sally Matthews et al. Unitel DVD

Any music that is so dense, academic, or inaccessible that the listener cannot find to it without first reading a small book about the work becomes a remote and abstract art. Ultimately, that creates a sense of distance from the broader public and the art-form that leads to the ivory-tower syndrome: A certain music becomes the prerogative of musicologists and composers, a rarefied elitist pursuit, perhaps an intellectual feather in the cultural hat of a country, but not part of the substance that forms or defines its culture. Horrifying as it may seem to those who cherish and defend the “fine arts”, (even) the fine arts need to be popular to a significant degree if they are to remain meaningful in the cultural life of a society.

Korean born composer Unsuk Chin from Berlin, to where she moved 1988 after studies with György Ligeti in Hamburg, says that she does not want music that needs to be explained. At least not for her first opera “Alice in Wonderland” that received its world premiere in Munich under Kent Nagano on Saturday, June 30th after more than a year of preparations. For a composer who had started out as a Darmstadt-school serialist, thoroughly influenced by Stockhausen & Co., that’s a bold statement and comes in part due to Ligeti’s thorough re-poling of her compositional outlook.

These moments of recognizability and comfort (even plain C-major makes an appearance in this opera, well possibly a novelty in 21st-century opera) are kept together by Chin’s sound world that placed near-impossible demands on the Staatsoper’s pit. Large enough to hold any Meistersinger and Elektra orchestra, for Alice the seating plan had to be arranged anew and re-arranged again to squeeze in every player. And still, the percussion batteries overflowed into the director’s boxes to both sides of the stage. It is not the least of achievements that Chin’s music, despite the quantity of exotic instruments used, never calls attention to these instrumental ‘special effects’ like the rather more crass works of Ramírez, Sierra, Goljiov, and even Higdon or Schwantner. Harmonica and harpsichord, celesta and glockenspiel, Jew’s harp and little toy-pipes make their appearances, but to fine, never gratuitous effect; always appropriately in context to the extent that can be said at all about such an absurdist piece of work as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.And sure enough, there are moments in Ms. Chin’s music that need little explanation and are enjoyable to the broadest selection of ears. For one, Ms. Chin is fond of quoting, half mockingly, traditional opera in Alice, or, during the caterpillar‘s bass clarinet solo, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, or baroque elements during the tea ceremony.

Chin’s music, a tapestry of influences and ideas, is difficult to describe – not the least because it is difficult to remember much of it in precise ways. There were, however, a few moments where I thought: “This sure is better than Nicholas Maw’sSophie’s Choice“. It reminded of Sophie, which had its US premiere in Washington last season, while proving far less monotonous and same-ish, not pushing on ever so hard, and less tiring. Maybe the libretto lends itself to greater frivolousness or variety when you compose for words like “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder what you’re at…” than Holocaust, barbed wire, and “massive intakes of iron”.

The music of Alice remains a fairly difficult music, but it’s also imaginative, witty, well crafted, and – beyond the quotations – with moments of unsuspected beauty, never tiring, rarely taxing. And it certainly scores on every account against a recent Western-Asian Operatic premiere, namely The First Emperor, Tan Dun’s unbearable kitschy mix of second-rate Puccini with (in-and-of-itself interesting) Chinese percussion and string sounds.

But if the music was not as memorable as expected or desired, it was in some part the fault – or rather: achievement – of the staging. Brecht-student, painter, set-, costume designer, and stage director Achim Freyer, who staged the first performance of the Philip Glass trilogySatyagraha in Stuttgart (1981) and Salvatore Sciarrino’s Macbeth in New York, concocted a bizarre, fantastical set that dominated the performance to a degree that may have made Unsuk Chin feel uncomfortable. (Her support for the staging was – mildly put – shy of enthusiastic in several interviews given prior to the premiere.)

In front of steep stage, raked at 51 degrees (!) and nearly reaching the top of the visible part of the 90 feet high stage of the Staatsoper, stood lined up the eight singers (only their heads visible) who, in addition to Alice and the Queen, made up the cast’s different figures. All in the same makeup and wigs, operating detached white hands from behind a little barrier in front of them, they sang the parts that were then acted out by performance artists on the stage – floating (suspended from above), jumping, and gesticulating about in their oversized and colorful costumes. The croquet game (with rules resembling Calvinball), for example, was like a vast underwater ping-pong game with a likeness of Alice’s head serving as the ball. Frog and Dormouse (“You might just as well say that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”), March Hare and White Rabbit, and of course the ever-present, ever metamorphizing Cheshire Cat pop up and do their wily things on stage.

Colorful strings divide the stage into sections that are at times filled out with color (depicting the house in which Alice grows to enormous size) or sheer light, as in the final dream sequence that, like the sequence that serves as the prelude to the opera, are not actually from Lewis Carrol’s book but represent reoccurring dreams of Unsuk Chin about fatalism and faith. When Alice grows after eating the cake and cries herself a lake of tears, the 20-some feet tall Alice’s tears (one performer lifted into the air with the upper part, another at the bottom for the feet) are blue strips of fabric that endlessly gush from her eyes and fill the lower stage along with superimposed splatter of rain.

Regular Alice runs around in an oversized mask that has her appear childlike and surreal at once – to take that mask off only at the very end when she has put an end to the hokus-pokus of Wonderland by calling the shenanigans of the Queen of Hearts by their name. The Mock Turtle (“It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from”) appears in a big Campell’s Soup can, except it’s “Caroll’s [false] Turtle Soup” and plays the harmonica hauntingly – in between weeping helplessly. When Dame Gwyneth Jones appears as the Queen of Hearts, she is piercingly perfect, shrill and deliciously wacky, wobble-free – and, of course, a much-beloved favorite of the Munich audience, many of which still remember her legendary Marschallin.

Alice in Wonderland had originally been planned for the LA opera (where Kent Nagano has turned down Plácido Domingo’s offer for the role as Music Directorship but did agree to become Principal Conductor), but financial concerns scuppered the plans. Financial concerns are not much of a problem for Munich (one of the most generously subsidized opera houses in the world) where Nagano succeeded Zubin Mehta as Music Director in 2006. Alice became a Munich project and more ambitious in scope still.

The audience, conservative but open-minded, seemed to be plenty excited about the world premiere of Alice. Well over 100 audience members of all ages stood in line to secure a seat for an introductory talk, an hour before the second performance. But if Alice, sung in English and shown with German subtitles, was more than just a curiously interesting example of high art – gladly suffered in the name of being an audience that appreciates high art – remains questionable. The German audience, for one, has little experience with the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And to the extent the story is known, it’s through Walt Disney’s film, not the original book – a book that could easily be seen in a line with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, or Luis Buñuel films like La Voie lactée and Le fantôme de la liberté. The translation, shown as sub- and supertitles, tried its best, but was invariably cut and left to choose between a literal translation and finding its own plays on words that didn’t always relate to the scene. Even an innocent pun like the Doormouse’s “Long tale, indeed”, while proudly wiggling around its long tail, remained obscure to most. That (lack of) perception presumably allowed for the staging to overpower music and story in the way it did… though whether that was good or bad can’t quite be said with a staging so imaginative and wonder-full as Achim Freyer.

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At WCR: The Year in Review

Charles T. Downey, Top Ten Performances of 2016
Washington Classical Review, December 20

A Traditional 'Marriage of Figaro'

Joshua Hopkins and Lisette Oropesa in The Marriage of Figaro, Washington National Opera (photo by Scott Suchman)
Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

On Saturday night, September 24, 2016, the Washington National Opera’s performance of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was simulcast to Nationals Park for the annual Opera in the Outfield. In addition to a full opera house at the Kennedy Center, there were some 8,000 people in the ballpark pitching for Mozart. The evening began with the playing of the National Anthem.

Then came something unique in my many years of opera experience. After an overture played with punchy rhythms, conductor James Gaffigan led the WNO Orchestra in the opening orchestral measures to the duettino between Figaro and Susanna. Then the music stopped, and Gaffigan turned to the audience and exclaimed, “There’s supposed to be singing here.” But there wasn’t, because there was no Figaro or Susanna in sight. In fact, there was nothing in sight because the lights were down and the curtain had not been drawn. The culprit turned out to be a glitch with the automated curtain apparatus. The problem was soon resolved and Gaffigan and his forces began again – this time with Figaro and Susanna present on a stunningly handsome set of a neoclassical palace room.

The affair was handled with good humor, and thus began an evening filled with hilarity. The Marriage of Figaro was the musical Marx Brothers of its time. Da Ponte’s libretto, taken from Beaumarchais’s play of the same name, is a precursor to a French bedroom farce. The love spats, the impersonations, the cross-dressing, the endless conniving to entrap unfaithful lovers, the near-escapes, and the bald-faced lies combine to great comic effect. Part of the fun – the main part – is taking the terrible silliness of it all seriously, which is exactly what Mozart’s music does, though it is hardly lacking in effervescence. And it is what this excellent production does, as well. As Buster Keaton once said, comedy is a serious business. Only the audience should know that it’s funny. That was the case here, with hardly any moments of self-consciousness within the production to spoil the fun.

It is clear that director Peter Kazaras trusts that Mozart and Da Ponte knew what they were doing and so he played it straight, which is why it worked so well. (Why fight 230 years of success?) The sets and costumes are contemporaneous with the time in which the opera is set. Perhaps this is thought to be unoriginal today, but I was relieved to see a traditional production – particularly when done as attractively as this – because I am tired of seeing operas set anachronistically by directors for whom this substitutes as imagination. I’m not suggesting that there is only one way to do an opera, but do we really learn anything worthwhile from seeing Don Giovanni set in fascist Spain (as I recently experienced)? Or is Richard Wagner more correctly understood as an environmentalist who would wish us to recycle, as was suggested in the WNO’s superbly sung but sadly misconceived toxic-dump setting of the Ring Cycle this spring? Please, spare us! So often, productions such as these are calling attention away from the operas and toward the producers and directors – “Look at me!”

In any case, there was no solipsism in sight during this delightful evening of Figaro. All the principals sang and acted well. At first, bass-baritone Ryan McKinny seemed to lack the ultimate energy and ease with which to put over the role of Figaro, but he was simply warming up. He quickly grew in these departments until he clearly took command of the role and much of the opera. Soprano Lisette Oropesa’s Susanna sparked right from the beginning. Her singing was as fine as her lively characterization of the maid.

Baritone Joshua Hopkins as Count Almaviva and soprano Amanda Majeski as Countess Almaviva were paired well in the troubled marital relationship that drives the whole opera. With a good sense of stage presence, he was lecherous without being ridiculous, which made his repentance real. He was vocally strong. Majeski, in terms the Nationals Park audience would understand, hit her arias, particularly Dove sono, out of the ballpark. (I shall forgo saying it was pitch-perfect.) She was an affecting Countess. Mezzo-soprano Aleksandra Romano’s portrayal of the erotically eager pageboy Cherubino was fun and deft, though there seemed at times a slight wobble in her voice.

Keith Jameson’s tenor voice, deployed in the character role of Basilio, was one of the few able to slice through the orchestra when conductor Gaffigan swamped his singers, as he tended too often to do, particularly in the first act. Jameson’s acting captured the delicious superciliousness of Basilio. Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop as Marcellina and bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas, who also sang Dr. Bartolo in the May 2010 WNO Marriage, made for another wonderful pairing. They were spot on as character actors with perfect voices for their roles. Lanchas, however, struggled in a few spots when the pace of the parlando singing quickened to warp speed.

I have already praised set designer Benoit Dugardyn’s stunning neo-classical conception, forested with handsome Doric columns. Costume designer Myung Hee Cho’s costumes splashed the stage with strong colors against the off-white stone columns. The effect was striking and helped project the characters forward.

If the four acts of The Marriage of Figaro have demonstrated anything it is the universal human fallibility of its characters. Mozart, however, does not simply laugh at them. Rather, he expresses a touching compassion that ends things with an act of forgiveness that provides the basis for the restoration of the broken relationships he portrays. Marriage not only presents the problem; it presents the solution.

In short, this is a good production of a great opera. There is no reason not to go see The Marriage of Figaro when it repeats on September 26, 28, 30, and October 2.

At Washington Classical Review: WNO's Rebuilding Year

Charles T. Downey, WNO opens season with a visually attractive, vocally bland “Figaro”
Washington Classical Review, September 23

Latest on Forbes: World Premiere of A. Schreier's Hamlet at Theater-an-der-Wien

The Shakespeare Quadricentennial is upon us, hard, and Shakespeare music content is sprouting up wherever we look. If it is just rehashing the regularly played Verdi operas, then that is not much. Better to have something unknown revived, like the Bregenz Festival did with Amleto by Franco Faccio and with a libretto by Arrigo Boito (REVIEW) or commission a new work altogether. That is what the Theater-an-der-Wien did, with Hamlet, set to music by Arno Schreier and Thomas Jonigk writing an almost Shakespeare-free libretto to it. The result, premiered last week, was good, even if good (or OK) is not good enough, for an opera to leave a notable mark. In addition I briefly recap some of the performances that I have seen at the Theater-an-der-Wien in the last two years, which were not always satisfying but never made me waver in my admiration for this little stagione house that could; that bright spot on the cultural scene in Vienna. Full review here:

To Succeed Or Not To Succeed: Theater-An-Der-Wien World Premiere Of "Hamlet"

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Why Do We Love 'La Bohème' So Much?

D'Ana Lombard (Mimi) and Yongzhao Yu (Rodolfo) in La Bohème, Act I, Wolf Trap Opera, August 2016
(photo by Scott Suchman for Wolf Trap Opera)
Henry Mürger was a working-class writer born in Paris, the son of a tailor and a shop-worker. In his youth Mürger was so poor that his group of friends, who included the photographer Nadar, called themselves the Buveurs d'Eau (Water Drinkers) because they could not afford to buy a drink when they went out. Most of us have been there.

Mürger wrote about the desperate poverty he and his friends endured while trying to pursue their artistic interests in a book called Scènes de la vie de bohème. It was first read as a self-published serial, a feuilleton included as a literary supplement in another publication. Mürger eventually gathered the stories into a book published in 1851, when he was not yet 30 years old. For Mürger it was the combination of poverty and artistic drive that made the life of a bohemian, as he defined it, "any man who enters into the arts without any other means of existence except the art itself." The book made Mürger's name, and he went on to have some success as a poet and playwright.

In the 1890s, Giacomo Puccini and his librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, adapted the story into an opera, La Bohème. It premiered in 1896 in Turin, followed just one year later by an alternate version composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. This opera has become intensely popular with audiences. As proof, we have reviewed a never-ending stream of productions over the years, including from Washington National Opera (in 2007 and 2014), the Castleton Festival in 2011, and Santa Fe Opera (2011 and 2007). Wolf Trap Opera turned to it again this summer, having taken this long to recuperate after Jens vivisected both the work and a performance there in 2004. It returned to the stage of the Filene Center on Friday night in a staging that was not so successful.

La Bohème may not be for everyone, but it was one of the first operas that made a major impression on me as a teenager, so I have a weak spot for it to this day. The opera keeps to a few scenes from the book, focusing on the characters of Rodolfo (who represents Mürger himself, the struggling poet), Schaunard (the musician Alexandre Schanne), Marcello (the painter François Tabar), and Colline (the philosopher Jean Wallon), whose coat of many pockets is always heavy with books. The Café Momus, where the second act is set, was a favorite haunt for writers on the Rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, near the Louvre. Rodolfo's garret is on the Rue de la Tour-d'Auvergne, near Montmartre, the same street where Mürger lived. It is an intensely nostalgic work, and it makes just about everyone who hears it think fondly of their student days when they did not have two dimes to rub together after the rent was paid.

Other Reviews: Grace Jean, Strong ‘La Bohème’ at Wolf Trap makes a good case for more opera there (Washington Post, August 8)

The awkward body-mike amplification at the outdoor Filene Center made it difficult to judge the quality of the voices in this production. Soprano D’Ana Lombard, who was Rosina in Ghosts of Versailles last summer, had the range for Mimi, if not the floating vocal quality that makes her seem most innocent. Reginald Smith, Jr., who was an exceptionally strong Count in last summer's Le Nozze di Figaro, was equally powerful here as Marcello, with the same kinds of comic gifts that lightened his presence on stage. The Rodolfo of tenor Yongzhao Yu, new to my ears, seemed strong, but it is impossible to know how the voice would fill a hall when not amplified. Summer Hassan had the sass for Musetta, if not necessarily the laser-focused vocal goods. Shea Owens, who stepped into the role of Junius in The Rape of Lucretia in June at only a week's notice, and Timothy Bruno had capable turns as Schaunard and Colline, respectively.

Paul Curran updated the setting to the end of World War I. This made one question why Mimi was bothering with lighting her candle in the hallway, as well as why young men were still in Paris writing plays and painting canvases. (Even worse, it's been done before.) Erhard Rom designed one large set piece, Rodolfo's garret, that was somewhat cumbersome to roll on and off. A few small backdrop objects suggested the other scenes, as well as several large video screens (designed by S. Katy Tucker) that set the tone of Paris in the winter. The National Symphony Orchestra was again placed at the rear of the stage, with the same problems in amplification noticed last month. In particular, Grant Gershon had almost no way to control the rushing of the singers from behind the set, judging by the number of bad misalignments between the cast and the orchestra, not to mention the balance problems. A truly great production of this opera has eluded Ionarts up to this point, but the best one so far indicates that you need a straightforward production, not too heavy on the sentimentality, and a first-rate conductor who can actually conduct the singers.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'La Fanciulla del West'

Ensemble in The Girl of the Golden West (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items
Washington Post, August 4

Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, R. Tebaldi, M. del Monaco, C. MacNeil, Orchestra of Accademia di Santa Cecilia, F. Capuana (Decca)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Puccini's La Fanciulla del West may not be a rarity in some parts of the world, but Santa Fe Opera had not produced this work since 1995 when it revived it for this year's 60th anniversary season. The company bet on the draw of Puccini's name, even though this opera is perhaps the composer's most unwieldy, and its regular Mozart to fill the house for ten performances each. By comparison Roméo et Juliette was given seven performances, and Capriccio and Vanessa, the latter arguably the best production of the season, just five each.

Other Reviews: John Stege, Pistol-Packin’ Minnie (Santa Fe Reporter, July 6) Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe scene: A British stage director and a French conductor take on Puccini's Western opera (Dallas Morning News, August 3) Heidi Waleson, The 2016 Festival Season at the Santa Fe Opera (Wall Street Journal, August 9)

Emmanuel Villaume and the Santa Fe Opera orchestra turned in a compelling reading of this most accomplished score. It was not in the same class as Lorin Maazel's poised conducting of the work, the only other time it has come under review on this side of the Atlantic, at the Castleton Festival in 2013. Still, Villaume and especially the male chorus gave the work the nostalgic warmth needed to soften some of the less believable twists of the story.

If we do not find credible the homesickness of the miners in the first act, in their need to believe, as in the psalm taught to them by Minnie, in the possibility that every one of them can be saved by God, then their decision not to hang Dick Johnson at the end of the third act will seem doubly ridiculous. Probably, the opera likely would work better, would seem less silly, if it ended tragically. If Johnson got hanged and the boys shot their beloved Minnie as she tried to save him, the dying heroine would have found, as suffering women always do, her perfect complement in the music of Puccini.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Don Giovanni'

Leah Crocetto (Donna Anna) in Don Giovanni (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items
Washington Post, August 4

Mozart, Don Giovanni, J. Weisser, L. Regazzo, A. Pendatchanska, Freiburger Barockorchester, R. Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 2007)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
In Strauss's "Capriccio," heard last week at Santa Fe Opera, the Countess settles on Gluck as setting the highest standard for opera. If only Santa Fe Opera had heeded her advice and replaced its annual Mozart opera with one by Gluck, as I suggested to Charles MacKay a few years ago. Mozart may be a staple at Santa Fe Opera, but Mozart is rarely the highlight of any season here. For the last truly extraordinary Mozart production at Santa Fe Opera, you would have to go back to "Lucio Silla" in 2005. This year's "Don Giovanni," last heard here in 2009, had that same feeling of routine Santa Fe Opera Mozart, mostly pleasant but with some inevitable disappointment. A nice staging of Gluck's "Iphigénie en Aulide" would have been just the thing to lift the season into something extraordinary.

The piece came to life a bit more in the recitatives, when Glenn Lewis took over on the fortepiano, seated at the left corner of the pit so he could see and interact with the singers. The superlative recording led by René Jacobs showed how the fortepiano, played with improvisational fancy, can enliven the recitatives in this opera. Lewis was not quite on the level of that recording, but he worked in witty allusions to other arias, for example, when some characters were mentioned.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 60th Anniversary Season (Part 2 of 2)

Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, N. Stemme, J. Kaufmann, Wiener Staatsoper, F. Welser-Möst (Sony, 2016)

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items (Washington Post, August 4)

The big-ticket items on the 60th anniversary season at Santa Fe Opera are Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” which got ten performances each. And Richard Jones’s new production of “Fanciulla” (heard on August 2) could make viewers agree with Puccini, who called this unwieldy work his favorite.

Periodic titters in the Crosby Theater confirmed that the absurdities of the libretto — like “Madame Butterfly,” based on a work by David Belasco — remain problematic. The title figure, Minnie, runs a saloon in a California Gold Rush town; rebuffs the attentions of the local sheriff, Jack Rance; and falls for a stranger calling himself Dick Johnson, who turns out to be the highway bandit everyone in town is hunting. Somehow the town’s residents decide not to hang Johnson, and Minnie runs off with him. Characters include “Red Indians” named Billy Jackrabbit and Wowkle, described as “his squaw.”

Patricia Racette had the vocal power and the dramatic presence to make Minnie almost believable...

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[Read Part 1]

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Vanessa'

Zach Borichevsky (Anatol) and Virginie Verrez (Erika) in Vanessa (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course)
Washington Post, July 31

Barber, Vanessa (rev. version), C. Brewer, S. Graham, W. Burden, BBC Symphony Orchestra, L. Slatkin (Chandos, 2004)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Librettist Gian-Carlo Menotti drew inspiration from the bleak spirit of Karen Blixen’s Seven Gothic Tales in this original story. Set in a manor house in an unnamed northern climate, very much like Rungstedlund, the manor house in rural Denmark where Blixen grew up, the tense, formal atmosphere has some possible resonance with details of Blixen's life. Blixen's father hanged himself when she was a child, after he had impregnated one of the maids, infuriating his severe mother-in-law. Although she was invited to the premiere of Vanessa, Blixen reportedly left partway through, claiming illness, but perhaps she saw her own life reflected too much in the story.

The air of Greek tragedy, not just the allusion to Oedipus Rex in the first act that possibly provides a clue to Erika's hidden identity as Vanessa's daughter, pervades the work, as Menotti described it in his note to the libretto: "This is the story of two women, Vanessa and Erika, caught in the central dilemma which faces every human being: whether to fight for one's ideals to the point of shutting oneself off from reality, or compromise with what life has to offer, even lying to oneself for the mere sake of living. Like a sullen Greek chorus, a third woman (the old Grandmother) condemns by her very silence the refusal first of Vanessa, then of Erika, to accept the bitter truth that life offers no solution except its own inherent struggle. When Vanessa, in her final eagerness to embrace life, realizes this truth, it is perhaps too late."

Other Reviews: James M. Keller, Opera goes to the movies: SFO puts cinematic twist on ‘Vanessa’ (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 31) John Stege, Samuel Barber’s Wintry Tale (Santa Fe Reporter, August 2) James L. Paulk, Palette Of Love Is Noir, Blue & Gray At Santa Fe Opera (Classical Voice North America, August 3) Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe Opera: Barber's 'Vanessa' makes for a magical night (Dallas Morning News, August 4) Terry Ponick, Santa Fe Opera's elegant, disturbing 'Vanessa' (Communities Digital News, August 14) George Loomis, Vanessa, Santa Fe Opera — review: ‘An engrossing production’ (Financial Times, August 15)

The Oedipal struggle features mother and daughter (Vanessa and Erika, disguised as aunt and niece) both drawn to the same man, at once father, husband, and brother. When Anatol asks Erika who she is, she replies, "Sometimes I am her niece but mostly her shadow." In Act III, Vanessa, terrified that Erika will be found dead, calls out, "I love you, Erika, I have always loved you as if you were my own child, my own daughter." When the Baroness realizes that Erika has lost Anatol's unborn child and is ruined, she stops talking to Erika, which seems to indicate that is why she had stopped speaking to Vanessa. There is no mention of Erika's parents at any point in the libretto.

Another mythological allusion passes by even faster, when Anatol calls Vanessa "my Vanessa, my Ariadne." Is Anatol Theseus, who will abandon Vanessa, or is he Dionysos, who has come to rescue her on Naxos? In that case Anatol's father would be Theseus, who abandoned her, and now Anatol the younger is Dionysos, who rescues her. Barber's use of leitmotifs, which pervade the work, is complex, something that Prof. Robert Larsen studied in some detail in his Master's thesis but did not publish as far as I can determine. The Pulitzer Prize awarded to Barber for this opera, in 1958, was well deserved indeed.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Roméo et Juliette'

Susan Vishmid (dancer), Emily Fons (Stéphano), and Beth Miller (dancer) in Roméo et Juliette
(Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course)
Washington Post, July 31

Gounod, Roméo et Juliette, A. Gheorghiu, R. Alagna, J. Van Dam, S. Keenlyside, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, M. Plasson (Warner, 2010)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
The first time that Santa Fe Opera ever staged a Gounod opera was Faust in 2011. The second Gounod opera they have done, not surprisingly, is this season's Roméo et Juliette, heard on July 29, and it will likely be the last as Gounod's other operas rarely see the light of day. Stephen Lawless also directed this new production, and he made as much of a muddle of it as he did with Faust.

The French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré hews quite closely to Shakespeare's play in most respects, and there are some beautiful pieces in the score. Ailyn Pérez's voice has grown admirably, with a broad and confident tone that filled the house up to B-flat and optional high C at the end of Je veux vivre, Juliette's big waltz showpiece. Only above that, in the couple places where the role ranges up to high D in Act I, did the sound turn a little acidic. Occasional shortcomings of intonation were still present, but also much improved. Tenor Stephen Costello was cast as Roméo, likely before the two singers divorced, but he fell ill the day of this performance. His cover, Joseph Guerrero, was called in the afternoon of the performance and saved the show. Guerrero, who is in the Los Angeles Opera young artist program and took second prize at the Operalia Competition in 2014, had a beautiful sound, the vibrato tightly coiled but most not in an unpleasant way.

Raymond Aceto, who was a solid Hunding in the Washington National Opera Ring Cycle, was even stronger here as Frère Laurent. Others made less auspicious company debuts, with Tim Mix showing some charming stage presence but some limitations in volume as Capulet, and the handsome face of Elliot Madore not quite matched with a handsome voice as Mercutio. Apprentices were featured further down the cast list, none to great distinction, but Peter Scott Drackley, whom some Washington listeners may know, had a nice turn as Benvolio.

Even after the debacle of Stephen Lawless's staging of Faust in 2011, the director was allowed to do a similar sort of updating of the story into the 19th century, when the opera was composed. For Faust it was a sort of freak-show circus background, and here it was the American Civil War. (Get it? Because the two families are bitterly opposed to each other.) The Capulets and Montagues wore blue and red Civil War uniforms, respectively, and the ladies were costumed in huge hoop skirts and bonnets (sets and costumes by Ashley Martin-Davis), although the director missed a golden opportunity to costume the exceptionally tall Soloman Howard's Duke as President Abraham Lincoln. The set backdrop in place for the entire opera was a curved mausoleum wall, with inscriptions on some of the panels, and the staging opened with the burial of the two lovers, casting the opera as a flashback (an idea somewhat undermined by having the chorus fling off their mourning black on stage as the Act I party scene began).

Other Reviews: James M. Keller, Gounod’s ‘Roméo et Juliette’ at Santa Fe Opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 17) John Stege, Death-Mark’d Love on Opera Hill: SFO’s Shakespearean 'liebestod' (Santa Fe Reporter, July 20)

Actually, for a while the concept almost worked -- Frère Laurent doubles as a surgeon in an infirmary -- or at least did not make me angry until we reached the end of the third act. That is where Roméo's page, Stéfano, sings my favorite aria in the opera, and in this case where Stéfano appeared in the guise of what, I guess, was a cantinière, just with a ridiculous fake mustache. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Lawless turned this scene into some sort of drag cabaret act, complete with choreography (created by Nicola Bowie) involving two supernumerary dancers (pictured above). Lawless scores double for directorial perversity by inserting dancers into this scene and in Act I, while ignoring the Act IV ballet that here, as in almost every other production of this opera, was cut.

At the podium Harry Bicket led a capable performance from the orchestra, long on loud brass and featuring dizzying chromatic runs from the woodwinds in the Queen Mab aria and ardent, balanced sound in the divisi cello sections. The highest marks go to fight directors Rick Sordelet and Christian Kelly-Sordelet, who marshaled the cast, chorus, and a team of acrobats in some of the more impressive sword fights we have seen in an opera.

This production continues through August 25 at Santa Fe Opera.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Capriccio'

Amanda Majeski (The Countess) in Capriccio (photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course)
Washington Post, July 31

Strauss, Capriccio, E. Schwarzkopf, N. Gedda, D. Fischer-Dieskau, Philharmonia Orchestra, W. Sawallisch (EMI, 1957)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Santa Fe Opera gave the American premiere of Richard Strauss's Capriccio in 1958, not long after the 1942 world premiere in wartime Munich. It was last performed here in 1993, and the only time I have ever reviewed Capriccio was at the Opéra de Paris in 2004.

Capriccio is a meta-opera that is dizzyingly self-reflective. Set in the 18th century, two wealthy patrons, a Countess and Count who are sister and brother, invite a group of artists to their house outside Paris to discuss a work to be commissioned for the Countess's birthday. All the arts are represented -- a composer (Flamand), a poet (Olivier), an actress (Clairon), a theater director (La Roche), two Italian opera singers, a dancer, even a prompter -- vying for the attention of their patrons, one inclined more toward the popular arts (the Count) and one toward the higher ones (the Countess). In the end, the Countess decides that only an opera can feature all of the arts she loves equally, and the opera will tell the story of the very evening that has just played out.

Strauss himself understood the work's faults, telling his librettist, Clemens Krauss, as quoted by Michael Kennedy in his book Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma: "Never forget that our Capriccio is no piece for the broad public, any more than it should be played in a big house where only a third of the text can be understood. [It is] a dainty morsel for cultural gourmets, not very substantial musically -- at all events, not so succulent that the music will compensate for it if the general public does not take a liking to the libretto ... I have no faith in its theatrical effectiveness in the usual sense." Little surprise, then, that the house on July 27 had the greatest number of empty seats I can remember seeing in Santa Fe.

Strauss stacks the argument between music and words for supremacy in opera in his own favor, creating the most beautiful music for Flamand when he sets Olivier's sonnet to music, far surpassing the effect previously when the same poem is read aloud and unaccompanied. Along with Galeano Salas, the other Italian singer, also good, was Shelly Jackson from Manassas, Virginia, a former apprentice who in 2014 stepped into the role of Norina in Don Pasquale when the scheduled singer had to withdraw. Amanda Majeski did not impress in her debut in the truly awful staging of Vivaldi's Griselda by Peter Sellars in 2011, and she was not up to the demands of the Countess here either, brittle at the top and too easily covered by the orchestra to be effective. She will sing the role of the Countess in Washington National Opera's Le Nozze di Figaro this fall, and her Count at the Kennedy Center will be Joshua Hopkins, who made the same capable impression here as Olivier as he did as Papageno in a Santa Fe Magic Flute a decade ago. Majeski's Count in this Capriccio, Craig Verm, a former SFO apprentice, had a competent debut, but nothing remarkable.

Other Reviews: James M. Keller, Capriccio charms at Santa Fe Opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 24) John Stege, Ultimate Strauss: SFO’s Golden Hour (Santa Fe Reporter, July 27)

This beautiful score features Strauss at his most chameleon-like, quoting from a broad range of composers, including himself, a vivid reminder that he is, as scholar Michael Kennedy put it, "music's incomparable jester-poet." Leo Hussain's conducting did little to help this bit of elegant repartee shine, and the pit often sounded a little at odds with each other in the countless starts, shifts, and stops of the work. The overall musical cohesion was at its best in the two octets that show the ultimate power of opera, with eight different character perspectives jumbled together simultaneously. Some of Hussein's gestures seemed needlessly combative toward the musicians, as he repeatedly called for a louder sound from one of the musicians in the slender baroqueux accompaniment to the dance pieces, for example, or menacingly jabbed his finger at one of the Italian singers throughout their duet. The decision to take the intermission sheepishly added by Strauss was a mistake, as it comes at a drama-sapping point, just after the Countess has asked the Major-Domo to serve chocolate.

For the famous string sextet that opens the work, the six musicians were seated on stage, contrary to the composer's score indication, in a neo-Rococo chamber music salon in the midst of the Countess's more obviously modern home (sets and costumes by Tobias Hoheisel), which helped project their (not always ideal) sound. Director Tim Albery, whose stagings can be hit or miss, did little to make the work jump off the page. The period is updated to roughly the time of the opera's premiere, but without any reference to the horrors that Strauss was trying to forget by writing this escapist work. (Really, if there were any time for gratuitously adding Nazis to an opera, this would be it.) The mise en abyme suggested by the chamber music salon, where the Countess has her gorgeous final scene as night falls — the escapism of opera in general, and of this opera in particular — was not enough to lift the work above its surface wit. In that glorious final scene, Albery has the Countess see her reflection not in a mirror, as Strauss wanted, but in the French doors at the back of the salon, an alteration abetted by the supertitles, which avoid any translation of the word "mirror" heard from the singers. It may seem an insignificant change, but without it much of the work's meaning likely sails over the head of viewers unfamiliar with the libretto.

This production runs through August 19, at Santa Fe Opera.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 60th Anniversary Season (Part 1 of 2)

Barber, Vanessa (orig. version), E. Steber, N. Gedda, R. Elias, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, D. Mitropoulos (Sony)

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course) (Washington Post, July 31)

Some companies celebrate anniversaries with a world premiere; but the Santa Fe Opera, which has staged its share of them over the years, is celebrating its 60th anniversary this summer with three rarely-performed 20th-century masterpieces, instead. Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa,” heard for the first time in the company’s history, crowned the season in its opening performance on Saturday evening.

In Gian Carlo Menotti’s taut libretto, set in a manor house in rural Denmark, Vanessa has been waiting for over twenty years for her lost love, Anatol, with her silently hostile mother and her niece Erika. At the start of the opera, an Anatol arrives who turns out to be the lost lover’s son, and he sets about seducing both aunt and niece. When Vanessa asks Erika to read to her in the first scene, Erika chooses Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex,” lines spoken by Oedipus just at the moment when he is revealed on stage having struck out his own eyes. You can guess that the story will not end well.

Soprano Erin Wall had shattering power in the title role, her voice revealing all of Vanessa’s pent-up frustration, but with a striking high pianissimo also in her arsenal...

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Britten's 'Lucretia' at Wolf Trap

J’Nai Bridges (Lucretia, on right in blue) and River Rogers (Child) in The Rape of Lucretia (photo courtesy of Wolf Trap Opera)

With many operas produced by Wolf Trap Opera Company, it is a matter of shoehorning the work into the confines of the Barns and its tiny orchestra pit. Benjamin Britten's chamber operas, a series of works for small theaters, are perfectly suited to the venue. The first of them, The Rape of Lucretia, opens the summer season at Wolf Trap, seen in its opening night on Friday. All the major elements of staging, casting, and musical performance came together admirably, in a production that impressed in many ways, while not ultimately solving the work's basic dramatic problems. (Spoilers to follow.)

As noted in my preview article, Mary Beard discusses the story of Lucretia in some detail in her informative book SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. The events, which supposedly took place in the sixth century B.C., were not recorded by Livy in Ab urbe condita until the first century B.C. The virtuous Lucretia, wife of the Roman nobleman Collatinus, was raped by Tarquinius Sextus, the son of the last Etruscan king to rule Rome. Not able to suffer the shame, she commits suicide, and Collatinus and his friend, Junius Brutus, brandish the bloody knife as they rally the Romans to rise up and overthrow the Tarquins. Not coincidentally, Collatinus and Brutus (the ancestor of the Brutus who took part in the assassination of Julius Caesar) are elected the first consuls of the new Roman republic.

Mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges brought dignity and a strong vocal presence to the title role, equal parts virginal lightness and tragic weight. In the wonderful women's ensemble scenes, which are the best parts of this opera, she was supported by the flighty high soprano of Amy Owens as Lucia and the steady maternal sound of Sarah Larsen as Bianca, her nurse. Will Liverman captured the transformation of Tarquinius from patrician soldier into bestial attacker, and Shea Owens stepped into the role of Junius (Brutus) effectively on only a week's notice. Christian Zaremba had the largest sound, just slightly unfocused here and there, as Collatinus, tall and noble of bearing. The framing of the story in Christian terms is an unfortunate relic of librettist Ronald Duncan's choice of source, André Obey's modern French play Le Viol de Lucrèce. Here, the Male Chorus, sung with moral force by tenor Brenton Ryan, and Female Chorus of powerhouse soprano Kerriann Otaño related the story to each other as part of what seemed like a confession, due to Kara Harmon's costuming of the characters as Catholic priest and modern lay woman.

Other Reviews: Philip Kennicott and Anne Midgette, A powerful opera about a horrible subject (Washington Post, June 12)

Louisa Muller's staging was simple and dramatically effective, with Erhard Rom's set evoking the marble and rusticated stone of a Roman setting, while the costumes of the soldiers suggested a modern American present. The rotating set platform, a first in Barns history, alternated between an outdoor scene with a staircase and an interior room, put to most effective use during the disturbing rape scene, where stagehands rotated the set at a dizzying rate. (The company asked counselors from the Fairfax County Rape Crisis Center to be on hand in the lobby, in case audience members had traumatic memories triggered by the story.) Craig Kier, whom we last saw at the podium in the University of Maryland production of Marc Blitzstein's Regina, again did not seem to have enough control over balances, with the sound of both singers and orchestra becoming overbearing at times.

Two aspects of Muller's directorial concept went unexplained until the final scene. She has added a supernumerary character, the daughter of Lucretia, played by the adorable and affecting River Rogers. Adding characters without any lines to a libretto that does not include them is a perilous business, as eventually a viewer will wonder why a major character is unable to speak. One also wonders why the Female Chorus, an angry woman with a nose ring, a smoking habit, and issues to resolve, is going to confession with the Male Chorus. In the final scene, Muller seems to want us to understand -- because the girl takes her dead mother's necklace, the same one around the neck of the Female Chorus -- that the Female Chorus is the daughter of the raped woman, all grown up.

This production runs through June 18, in the Barns at Wolf Trap.

Gordon's 'Van Gogh'

M. Gordon, Van Gogh, Alarm Will Sound (Canteloupe, 2008)

Charles T. Downey, A ‘Van Gogh’ opera without the video
Washington Post, May 30

When Michael Gordon premiered his opera “Van Gogh” in 1991, performances were accompanied by an Elliot Caplan video. When presented without the video, as in a concert by the Great Noise Ensemble on Saturday night at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, the work comes across more as a static song cycle than an opera. The effect is the same as on the recording made by the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, released by the Cantaloupe Music label in 2008.

Gordon set to music several disjointed passages from Van Gogh’s letters, which give a psychological portrait of the Dutch painter. Soprano Lisa Perry, tenor Michael Dodge and baritone Andrew Sauvageau gave voice to the artist’s observations, sometimes in unison, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in solo moments... [Continue reading]

Michael Gordon, Van Gogh
Great Noise Ensemble
Atlas Performing Arts Center