Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Dies at 90

Capriccio Four Last Songs - Szell Four Last Songs - Ackermann Rosenkavalier

Last night, on August 3rd, 2006, the soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf died, age 90. There is little to be added to Anthony Tommasini’s excellent obituary. (Skip Adam Bernstein's, and go straight to Tim Page's.) Her undisputed fame and yet strangely controversial ability – never mind the even more controversial part of her bio that covers the 1930s and 1940s – are all discussed. The way Walter Legge transformed her from a little German starlet (beautiful and allegedly very popular with a select few Wehrmacht generals at the time) into a Grand Lady is hinted at, although Tommasini is of course right in focusing on the artistic impact Legge had on her.

He was largely responsible for turning her into a singer that cared (overly) about the accentuation of every note and phrase… the very quality that had her so admired or rejected as draining every piece of music she sang of its naturalness. Nor does everyone respond well to the grain in her voice – a little grain of sand that splits it into two parallel strands. Or, were you to compare voices to a knife’s edge, Schwarzkopf’s is one of those knives that have a hollow edge. To some ears, the result is an ever present, very slight sharpness, although there is none, measurably. While it is true that she could make Fischer-Dieskau seem a spontaneous singer, there are undoubted and near universally admired moments of glory in her singing – all well captured on disc.

Obituaries: Anthony Tommasini, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Opera Singer, Dies at 90 (New York Times, August 4) Adam Bernstein, Renowned Coloratura [sic!] Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 90 (Washington Post, August 4) Tim Page, The Plaintive Last Song of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Washington Post, August 4) Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (London Times, August 3)

Both accounts (or more correctly: either one) of her Four Last Songs ought to be heard and had. Szell offers better sound, while Ackermann features Schwarzkopf in fresher voice. The trio in the 1956 mono Rosenkavalier (Schwarzkopf, Ludwig, Teresa Stich-Randall) is among the most delicious operatic events on record. Whether for Schwarzkopf – who is perfect as the wistful, dignified countess – or the rest of the cast and Sawallisch’s felt conducting (a bit more engaging than Karajan in the Rosenkavalier or Ariadne auf Naxos), Capriccio is possibly my favorite Strauss opera and this certainly my favorite Strauss recording.

I can't claim to have any particular interest in her artistry as such - but whenever it lent itself to a grand results, it was admirable. Beyond the Strauss, there is also lovely Mozart and intriguing Wolf - explore: somehow there is never a better time than an artist's death to do so.

Renée Fleming Thunderously Received at Wolf Trap

Record heat in the D.C. area was probably to blame for Wolf Trap not being sold out – despite everyone's favorite, Renée Fleming, performing on Thursday night. The threat of thunderstorms may not have helped either – and as if to reinforce that there is a certain inherent risk in opting for outside seating, a thunder slowly shuddered into Paul Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The performance of the Summer-NSO led by Emil de Cou was beautifully and dramatically accentuated by lightning – although the enjoyment of that show was probably predicated on having a claim to seats under the Filene Center’s roof.

Paul Dukas’s claim to fame, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is more likely to evoke memories of Mickey Mouse frantically trying to control the flood his controlled-uncontrollable broom-servants create, rather than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem upon which it is all based, Der Zauberlehrling. But it couldn’t have been a more appropriate scene to think of as the sluices of heaven opened wide. Amidst more thunder and lightning, the music started to be the soundtrack to the excitement outside and accompanied by thuds from the speaker systems and flickering lamps, the work finished only seconds before a total power outage left the stage and audience in the dark, causing the audience only to redouble its cheers. At least on the inside, the audience’s mood was not the least (forgive me) dampened… despite the spray being felt by even those sitting in the very center of the orchestra seating. NSO Wolf Trap Festival conductor Emil de Cou meanwhile used the forced intermission to hone his already considerable comedic stand-up skills – much to the amusement of the crowd.

C. Debussy, Orchestrations, E. de Cou / SFBSO

The weather calmed down appropriately for the beautiful calm and serenity of Debussy’s Clair de Lune as orchestrated by André Caplet. (It is something of a de Cou specialty; he was also the first one to record this work, available on a disc with other Debussy orchestrations played by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.) Electricity was restored, more or less, even if now part of the audience, instead of the orchestra, was illuminated by the selectively functioning spotlights.

After that, all radiating was done by Renée Fleming, who sang Samuel Barber’s gorgeous Knoxville: Summer of 1915 – and continued in her luminous way even after the spotlight on her went back into remission, leaving her to sing out of the dark. The performance was a good one, with her passionate, creamy voice (in live performance always with fewer of the unfortunate Renéeisms that can turn her sound into stilted, unnatural mush) aptly recreating the mood of sedated Tennessee summer evenings. The harsh metallic hue given to her voice by the (otherwise discrete) amplification was a small drawback. The orchestra, more in accompanying position than partnership, did its job as well as could have been expected – especially with half of them barely able to decipher the notes in front of them. To hear the audience enthusiastic about 20th-century orchestral songs, apart from the popular Richard Strauss fare, only added value.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, Dark Victory for Fleming and the NSO (Washington Post, August 5)

Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloë Suite No. 2 opened the second half – lights fixed and adjusted – and murmured along gaily and enjoyably. It was here that the NSO and de Cou showed their best and most engaged playing of the night. A gracious and amusing speech by Ms. Fleming (bad and successively worse weather seems to follow her to the Wolf Trap – for her next appearance there she demanded a blizzard) preceded Francesco Cilea’s “Poveri fiori” from Adriana Lecouvreur and the soprano evergreens “O, mio babbino caro” and “Vissi d’arte” of Puccini. Less edge from the microphone allowed for a consequently better sound. Classics as these arias are, they were upstaged by what followed. Saving the best for last, as Ms. Fleming often does (no concert of hers without it, thankfully), Richard Strauss’s “Morgen” was the finest work to be heard and presents what Renée Fleming was and still is best at. An affected, slurred, and pulled-around “Summertime” made up for qualitative shortcomings in general popularity, as did “I could have danced all night” with (surprisingly tuneful) audience participation. In all, Maestro de Cou offered a keen and sensitive accompaniment from his instrument, the orchestra, allowing Fleming to milk every phrase exactly to her heart’s content. Flotow’s “The Last Rose of Summer” sent the audience back into a pleasantly cooled down night, and Ms. Fleming home with all the applause she could have wished for.

Bandelier National Monument

I had hoped to take Mini-Critic along to see Cendrillon last night, but he is just too young for an opera that starts at 8:30 and lasts three hours. So, to make it up to him, we took the family to Bandelier National Monument this morning. Every time I come to New Mexico -- we stay with family in Los Alamos -- I dream about making the long trip to Chaco Canyon, but with two small children we are just going to have to wait a few years to do that. The second-best option is another fascinating Anasazi site, not quite as stunning but much easier to get to, Bandelier. The Pueblo tribes around Los Alamos claim to be descendants of the people who lived here, in adobe dwellings attached to caves in the steep cliffs and also in a circular pueblo village called Tyuonyi. As at Chaco, these ancestral dwellings are concentrated around kiva structures, wells from which the Pueblo tribes believe their ancestors first crawled forth from the earth.

The main part of Bandelier is in Frijoles Canyon, an eerily still and quiet place where a small, clear creek flows, which was probably what drew these communities here. Bandelier is sort of a misnomer, as it comes not from the period when the pueblo tribes lived here but from the name of a Swiss-American amateur anthropologist, Adolph Bandelier, who came to live here in the 19th century. (He published a novel about his time living in the canyon, called The Delight Makers.) There is a trail through the canyon, one half of which goes through Tyuonyi and along the cliff dwellings, looping around to come back along the creek. It was a typically sunny New Mexico day yesterday, but the piñon and juniper trees provide plenty of shade. When you climb up the ladders to the few cliff dwelling you are allowed to visit, it is quite comfortable there. Mini-Critic did a great job climbing up and down the ladders and making the climb up the cliff paths, often narrow and steep, to the openings.

The entrance fee to the national park is now $12 per car, but it is good for six days, so we are planning to go back once or twice. Making that clear was the only way to get Mini-Critic to leave peacefully. I would like to go to the Tsankawi site, which is part of the park but several miles away from the entrance. There is another ruin, more cave dwellings, and apparently more petroglyphs than you can see in Frijoles Canyon.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: The Tempest Revisited

This is a follow-up to my review of The Tempest (2004), an opera by Thomas Adès, now in its American premiere at Santa Fe Opera. These remarks are based on a second hearing of the work last night.

New Mexico has been having a strange summer, at least in comparison to recent ones. My memory of previous summer visits has been of bone dryness, to the point that it took several days for my eyes to adapt to the lack of humidity and not feel like they were going to dry up and turn to dust. Family members here assure me that this is normally the "monsoon season" in northern New Mexico, meaning that there are regular spells of rain, usually in the afternoon. The mountains divide up the area into small microclimates, and we can often see from one place rain falling on another place. On the way down to the Santa Fe Opera last night, for the second performance of The Tempest, I saw seven separate rainbows shimmering over small storms, through none of which my car actually passed. I am sorry to report that it is very difficult for an amateur to take a digital photograph of a rainbow, especially from a car pulled over to the side of a freeway.

Fellow Washingtonians, there is another reason that I love to leave the District of Columbia for New Mexico this time of year, and that is the cool, dry nights wearing a jacket to stay warm in the Crosby Theater. After several episodes of drenching rain near where I am staying, I was hoping that the New Mexico climate would oblige the premiere of The Tempest with a thunderstorm. Alas, it was not to be, although there were a few flashes of lightning in the distance. Last night, that wish came true, and most members of the audience took their seats a little soggy from a cloudburst that hovered over Tesuque for most of the evening. At the moment that the pre-curtain announcement ended, the traditional reminder to turn off cell phones and pagers was punctuated with a flash of lightning and rumble of thunder, followed by a nervous twitter of audience laughter. In spite of the nuisance of rain at intermission, the mild storm added a perfect atmospheric background.

Rod Gilfry as Prospero and Cyndia Sieden as Ariel, "Farewell to Ariel," The Tempest, Santa Fe Opera, set and costumes designed by Paul Brown, photo by Ken Howard © 2006

After a second listening, none of the opinions I expressed in my review, positive and negative, have changed. It is an exquisite opera, one that I expect to listen to many more times when a recording and/or DVD becomes available. I noticed more of the details, spending some time looking at the instrumentation in the orchestra pit: heavy on the bass (two bassoons and contrabassoon) and the treble and metallic (flute, piccolo, harp, celesta, glockenspiel, piano). There was even a rather large tree branch in the percussion section, meant to be shaken, I guess, or perhaps rustled over a snare drum. Hopefully some day, Ionarts will be so famous that opera houses will let me sit in the orchestra pit one night.

The other thing that has been rumbling around in the back of my brain was a comment that Adès made at the symposium I attended. He said that he used 18th-century music as a model for the music of The Court in the opera. In particular, he had Baroque dance music in mind, I think, music that for one page, as he put it, sets a mood and then on the next page there is a completely different mood. I am working on a theory about Shakespeare's play The Tempest, that it could actually be about a court ballet, or masque, as they were called in England. In fact, Louis XIII and Louis XIV both hosted any number of court ballets, in which the guests were given costumes and masks and the whole court pretended to be in an imaginary world, often on an enchanted island. During the period of the entertainment, often just a day but up to as many as three days, all sorts of things could happen and all bets were off.

The time of the first performance of Shakespeare's play is thought to be in 1611. Shakespeare was certainly familiar with the court masque, since at this time Ben Jonson was the principal author of masques in the English court. In fact, in 1616, Jonson created a masque at Whitehall, which was attended by Pocahontas (see this post for more information). The theme of colonialism now usually analyzed in The Tempest (Caliban claims to be king of the island that Prospero rules as overlord by his superior power) has an alluring source in that occasion. In fact, I wonder if the Jamestown settlement was at all in Shakespeare's mind as he wrote The Tempest. He apparently had read some accounts of shipwrecks on Caribbean islands.

Summer Opera 2006: "Street Scene"

I have already regretted not being able to make it to any of the productions at Opera Theater of St. Louis earlier this summer. Worst of all, I missed the chance to see one of my favorite musicals (operas) staged, Kurt Weill's Street Scene. The only review I read was by Sarah Bryan Miller (Street Scene, June 18) for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Bruno Schwengl's sweat-stained costumes and gritty, grimy set put us immediately in "Street Scene's" time and place: an ugly New York brownstone, overstuffed with observant, gossipy humanity, on a killingly hot day. Open windows showed identical framed photos of the Statue of Liberty, telegraphing immigrant aspirations. A pack of unendearing children scribbled with chalk on the sidewalk as events began to unfold: jealousies, lusts, love, grief, birth, death. Director James Robinson manipulated the large cast - 32 named parts, plus a dog, plus the ensemble - skillfully, playing up the strong points of the drama and downplaying the more dated aspects. The comedy made the tragedy all the more devastating.

Music director Stephen Lord triumphed in the pit, seamlessly tying together all the diverse musical strains and holding the stage forces securely. Soprano Carolyn Betty was phenomenal as Anna Maurrant, the doomed wife who seeks a little kindness in the wrong arms, bringing a big, gleaming instrument, strong stage presence and dramatic conviction to the role. Tenor Garrett Sorenson has a gorgeous voice with ringing high notes, and he made sweet, nerdish Sam Kaplan into a very real and sympathetic person.

It turns out that Robert Boyd published a review at Talkin' Broadway, too.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Carmen

Anne Sofie von Otter with product placement, Carmen, Santa Fe Opera, photo by Ken Howard © 2006

With some operatic roles, it is difficult to enjoy watching an opera in a live performance if the singer does not embody the character's physical qualities. In the new Carmen now at Santa Fe Opera, Anne Sofie von Otter has created one of the most alluring performances of the title role, but mostly for the ears. When she first assayed this role, at Glyndebourne -- a performance that was almost immediately released on DVD -- most were amazed that the normally cool, Nordic von Otter had created one of the most sensual Carmens to date. Little of the sexual frankness -- crassness, perhaps -- admired and occasionally criticized in the Glyndebourne production was evident here, in her debut performance at Santa Fe. This is clearly not a deficit in von Otter's acting, since she has proven herself capable of a sultry Carmen, but is part of the ethos of this unusual production, directed by Lars Rudolfsson. According to an interview (One Carmen is never enough, June 30) that von Otter gave to Craig Smith for the Santa Fe New Mexican, she said, "I feel that I don’t exactly want to do it very saucily." Objective accomplished.

Available at Amazon: Georges Bizet, Carmen, Anne Sofie von Otter, Marcus Haddock, Laurent Naouri, Glyndebourne Festival Opera (released on March 18, 2003) Other Reviews: Craig Smith, ‘Carmen’ opens season with passion, high drama (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 2) Roger Snodgrass, Carmen again, anew, always (Los Alamos Monitor, July 2)

There are none of the traditional trappings of the 19th-century Seville in Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy's libretto, and in spite of the involvement of New Mexico choreographer María Benítez, little real flamenco or Spanish gypsy color in the movements. The staging concept was to update the action from that specified in the libretto ("vers 1820") to a century or so later, to the Spain of General Franco, not far from the setting of last year's Ainadamar. Most of the color was drained out of the sets (designed by Neil Patel) and the costumes (designed by Kersti Vitali Rudolfsson), making this one of the more drab productions I can remember. The drabness certainly enhanced the verismo quality of this desperate opera, but I found that Carmen lost most of her appeal and Don José's obsession with her was made that much more puzzling. As part of the early 20th-century atmosphere, there was a lot of cigarette smoking. In the third act, the criminal band of Carmen's friends are smuggling boxes of cigarettes, mostly the brand that Carmen herself is seen smoking in the photograph above. I hope that Philip Morris gave Santa Fe Opera a big check for this prominent product placement.

Still, the music of this opera is so pleasing, so well known, so well crafted that it hardly matters how the story is clothed. Most impressive of all were the extraordinarily well sung and convincingly choreographed choral scenes, with the apprentice singers, under the expert direction of chorus master Gregory Buchalter, in top form. The chorus of children, shameless hams who clearly relished portraying a herd of mischievous street urchins, was no less impressively trained. They were always vocally present and almost always a pleasure to hear, with a few sour high notes in the final crowd scene.

Carmen, Santa Fe Opera, sets by Neil Patel and costumes by Kersti Vitali Rudolfsson, photo by Ken Howard © 2006

Jennifer Black as Micaëla, Carmen, Santa Fe Opera, photo by Ken Howard © 2006

Anne Sofie von Otter was stellar, giving every note its own nuance, and with the skilled assistance of music director Alan Gilbert and his well-marshalled orchestra, making each of Carmen's famous pieces sound new with some unusual choices of tempo and color. Von Otter was pretty much the dream Carmen, the voice perfectly calibrated and always rich and velvety in tone. I was less impressed with tenor William Joyner, although he did capture the hapless quality of Don José. What was missing, I felt, was the puissance necessary to the brigadier's jealous rages, particularly in the opera's brutal conclusion. What makes a nice boy from the country murder his ne'er-do-well girlfriend? I don't know, and Joyner's performance did little to enlighten me, lacking as he did some of the raw vocal power that would have pushed the final scene over the emotional edge.

I enjoyed the performances of the two other love interests much more. I admit that I almost always prefer Micaëla to Carmen, because her music is more beautiful and she is simple virtue to loathsome vice. Soprano Jennifer Black -- an apprentice singer just last year -- took the opportunity that came her way because of another singer's withdrawal and ran with it. She was a somewhat frumpy but angelic Micaëla, who received the loudest ovation from an audience that certainly felt it had known her when. It was the first performance of this production with French baritone Laurent Naouri replacing David Pittsinger as Escamillo, reuniting Anne Sofie von Otter with another member of that 2002 Glyndebourne cast. Naouri was an oily and vain Escamillo, with enough vocal strength to justify the character's arrogance. The members of the supporting cast were all up to the task.

Performances of Carmen will continue throughout August, with Laurent Naouri as Escamillo. Beth Clayton will replace Anne Sofie von Otter in the title role on August 23 and 26.

Motezuma

Available at Amazon: Antonio Vivaldi, Motezuma, Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis (released on May 9, 2006) Antonio Vivaldi, "Montezuma," Dominique Visse, Danielle Borst, Isabelle Poulenard, La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy, Jean-Claude Malgoire (released on September 1, 1993)

The rediscovery of Vivaldi the opera composer has been accompanied by an outpouring of recordings, many of them excellent. This recording represents the biggest discovery of them all, Motezuma, a Vivaldi opera presumed lost forever until a manuscript copy of it was rediscovered by a musicologist named Steffen Voss, in the course of archival research in Berlin. Hooray, musicology! For the record, this definitive performance certainly replaces the worthy but highly speculative reconstruction, really more a pasticcio, made by Jean-Claude Malgoire in the 90s. Since that recording -- Malgoire's reworking of other pieces by Vivaldi to fit a surviving copy of the Motezuma libretto -- is now more or less unavailable, as far as I can tell, the work of Alan Curtis and his fine group, Il Complesso Barocco, is that much more welcome.

When Federico Sardelli and an early music group from Florence, Modo Antiquo, first performed the music from Voss's manuscript last summer, in a concert version at Rotterdam's De Doelen, Alan Riding told the story of the rediscovery in an article (Premiere for a lost Vivaldi opera, June 15, 2005) in the New York Times. There are, as I understand it, 22 arias included in copies of the libretto (all of which are not exactly the same, it should be noted), and the score from the archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie has only 12 of them. This is a significant find, to be sure, but extensive recreation still had to be carried out by Alan Curtis (Ph.D. in musicology, University of Illinois) and his lead violinist, Alessandro Ciccolini. In fact, according to the liner notes, Ciccolini actually composed a score of the recitatives on this recording and adapted pieces by Vivaldi for the missing arias, in many cases in accordance with previous scholarly findings related to this opera.

In a complicated court case that makes Lionel Sawkins v. Hyperion seem like child's play, the first staged performance of the opera last September was almost scuttled by a law suit brought by the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Because the Sing-Akademie owned the manuscript score, the lawsuit charged, it had the rights to the performance of the work. As reported in an article (Vivaldi's `Motezuma' Has Dusseldorf Premiere After Court Win, September 23, 2005) from Bloomberg News, that lawsuit was rejected. The music itself, even if it is on a manuscript page preserved only in one place, is no longer protected by any copyright. It is there for anyone who can make sense of it and perform it.

Il Complesso Barocco on Ionarts: Handel, Radamisto (2005) Handel, Rodelinda (2005)

It may have been better only to record the actual pieces by Vivaldi in the Berlin manuscript, an authentic skeleton versus a reconstruction approximating what we think the whole dinosaur may have been like. An extensive part of Act I is not found in the manuscript. Ciccolini's recitatives and adaptations of other Vivaldi arias are pretty enough but not of much musicological interest. Most brazenly, at the point where the Berlin manuscript begins, in the middle of an aria, Ciccolini has composed, in a convincingly Vivaldian style, an aria based on the 14 existing measures. It is an impressive bit of mimickry, for those interested in this sort of thing.

Il Complesso Barocco is a fine ensemble, and they perform up to their excellent reputation on these three discs. My only minor reservation is about the parts with horn, the overture and the occasional aria ritornelli. The two players do their best, but the lack of accuracy is the most convincing argument for admitting the use of modern instruments in this case. Ciccolini's compositional skill is put to its best use in the ornamentation of A section repeats, most of which are credited to him. The best examples in this recording demonstrate what Baroque ornamentation should be like in informed performance.

Of the six singers in the strong and well-balanced cast, mezzo-soprano Romina Basso has the most impressive sound, in the trouser role of Ramiro (created for Vivaldi by Angela Zanucchi), the tender younger brother of Fernando (Hernán Cortés). In one of the most beautiful of the rediscovered pieces, the slow aria "Quel rossor ch'in volto miri" (Act II), Basso's voice is equally plangent in the soaring high notes as when it plunges into the low range, as at the end of the B section. The aria is about the younger brother's desire to show clemency toward the Aztecs, tender sentiments expressed by a sensitive youth sighing and yearning for an ideal world. The voice is set against a lovely violin part, with a lilting ritornello, all of which will probably make this aria a recital favorite in the future.

As Teutile, Ramiro's beloved Aztec princess, soprano Roberta Invernizzi was equally sweet, with perhaps the most stunning cadenza on the recording at the end of "Un guardo, oh dio!" (Act II). In the two castrato roles, mezzo-soprano Maite Beaumont (Fernando) was a little rough, with an occasional change of color that suited her masculine role as the conquistador of the Aztecs, and soprano Inga Kalna had a reedy mezzo sound, a little strained at the top, to the strident role of Asprano, the Aztec general. Contralto Marijana Mijanovič brought an impressive and unique sound to the role of Mitrena, Motezuma's queen (created by Vivaldi especially for the unusual voice of Anna Giró, one of his voice students, believed by many to be his mistress, and certainly frequently favored in his operas), although the dark color of Mijanovič's voice was occasionally under pitch at top of range. Bass Vito Priante's Motezuma was forthright, with the right combination of outrage and sadness, marred only by some imprecision of pitch because of a slight wobble.

Some of the new arias are not that noteworthy (Fernando's "I cenni d'un sovrano" in Act I, for example), but others are so beautiful as to make the recording worth buying. Motezuma's "Se prescritta in questo giorno" (Motezuma, Act I) has a great ritornello and interesting melodic turns. The combination of horns and extremely low vocal writing mark Mitrena's "S'impugni la spada," while Asprano's "Brilleran per noi" (Act II) combines a fast A section (with brilliant ornaments on the repeat) and a charming, melancholy B section. In Asprano's "D'ira e furor armato" (Act II), excellent solo trumpet playing provides marvelous interplay with its twin, the powerful vocal part. The best solution would be for Deutsche Grammophon to release a 1-CD excerpted version, with only the rediscovered pieces actually by Vivaldi.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: The Magic Flute

Natalie Dessay as Pamina and Toby Spence as Tamino, 'Tamino mein', The Magic Flute, Santa Fe Opera, photo by Ken Howard © 2006

Earlier today, Jens reviewed an excellent new recording of The Magic Flute, one that I have been listening to as well lately. It is an opera that we find ourselves writing about frequently at Ionarts, and it is one that is near and dear to my heart. So here we are again, with Mozart's masterful Singspiel in a production at Santa Fe Opera. Normally, I am happy to have the chance to hear it, but this summer I was particularly thrilled because it featured French soprano Natalie Dessay. Having recovered from devastating vocal problems in recent years, including operations on her throat, Dessay has returned to the stage in excellent voice, singing a Juliette at the Met and now taking on her first Pamina in Santa Fe. German is not her best language and this may not become a signature role, but she made a fragile, tender, ravishing, and well-acted Pamina. Ach, ich fühl's was full of pain, but not weepy, and the voice still has the power to transport me. Singing across from her, Toby Spence as Tamino was right to collapse at the thought of losing her.

As for the rest of the cast, it was a very satisfying evening. Toby Spence was a dashing and vocally robust Tamino, even when he made his first entrance while supine in the mouth of a mechanical serpent. In Dies Bildnis, his tone was heroic but not overbearing, and his strong acting really gave the impression of the thunderbolt that hits him from seeing that picture of Pamina. Heather Buck's Queen of the Night was all icy venom, with impressive accuracy in her two infamous and stratospheric arias. There were a few issues of flexibility in the first act aria, and shifting from middle to high register sometimes involved a less than smooth difference in volume. As Papageno, Joshua Hopkins found a good combination of dolt and good heart. He is not to be blamed for the poor decision to have Papageno whistle instead of playing the little woodflute specifically indicated in the libretto ("In der Hand hat er eine kleine Waldflöte").

Natalie Dessay as Pamina and Heather Buck as the Queen of the Night, The Magic Flute, Santa Fe Opera, photo by Ken Howard © 2006

In fact, the libretto appears to have been the least important authority for this production (more about that in the next paragraph), as the magic flute was made of metal when the libretto has Pamina describe it as made of oak ("Mein Vater sie aus tiefstem Grunde / Der tausendjähr'gen Eiche aus"). The gigantic Andrea Silvestrelli had the most resonant voice on the stage as Sarastro, with rumbling low notes where he needed them. The three ladies have some of the best music in the opera, in my opinion, and Sarah Gartshore, Paul Murrihy, and Lucia Cervoni were a well-matched trio who sang and acted well. The three child singers who sang as the three boys were sometimes hard to hear but did a fine job for their age. The orchestra played very well, with excellent performances from the principal flutist and whoever played the Glockenspiel part. Conductor William Lacey sometimes seemed at odds with singers and musicians, and I was not always convinced by his musical choices.

Where this production failed, however, was in the prosaic and bizarre staging directed by Tim Albery, with sets and costumes by Tobias Hoheisel. The set was promising at the outset, with two walls of what looked like Frank Gehry's trademarked brushed titanium, matching the floor, opening to the famous vista of the Jeméz Mountains. It was a stark, almost monastic setting appropriate to Sarastro's temple, with colorful birds at the ends of poles. The mood was spoiled almost immediately as Papageno, during his first aria, "caught" his birds by plucking the stuffed creatures off their poles. I love challenging and even strange productions when they are guided by the score and libretto, but here the basic concept seemed to be to throw incongruent costumes on the singers and mix them together.

David Cangelosi as Monostatos, Joshua Hopkins as Papageno, Natalie Dessay as Pamina, and Chorus, The Magic Flute, Santa Fe Opera, photo by Ken Howard © 2006

Perhaps someone out there can make sense of costuming Sarastro and his followers in 18th-century Viennese clothing, Monostatos and his henchmen as Nazi soldiers (probably only for the joke of having them dance away when Papageno plays his Glockenspiel, a moment right out of Springtime for Hitler), the Queen of the Night and the Ladies as Elizabethan noblewomen (Heather Buck's costume was cribbed directly from that for Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, complete with white face powder), Papageno as the ugly American tourist (he wears a bright baseball cap, Santa Fe Opera T-shirt, and yellow shoes and eats McDonald's), Tamino as a Renaissance prince with a T-shirt under his fake chest plate, and Pamina as a 50s Annette Funicello who later runs around in her nightgown. It gave me the impression that with every scene change someone had flipped the channel to the next late night television rerun. Then, in my dreams, all those old war and history movies and terrible sitcoms had run together. Perhaps the creative team should have read the libretto.

Other listeners were troubled by the English adaptation of the German dialogue, an option that makes perfect sense given the nature of the Singspiel as something for people to understand in their native language. I could have done without the little rhymed couplets, approaching doggerel, that concluded major scenes, and the incongruous collection of accents (Italian Sarastro, French Pamina, British Tamino, and so on) caused some laughter. What was lost in the glib English dialogue and the motley miscellany of the staging was the fairy tale beauty of Mozart's opera. The only thing that saved it was due to lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, who bathed the set in golden light whenever a didactic statement occurred in the libretto (found after the lock is put on Papageno's lips to keep him from lying, when the magic flute is described as bringing joy to the world, when the Glockenspiel makes Monostatos dance, when love is extolled in the second act). These moments of enlightenment, when Mozart and Schikaneder are trying to teach you something, were underscored by Ingmar Bergman's film version of the opera by the singers holding up the words on scrolls or signs. It was nice to know that someone on the Santa Fe production team had read the libretto.

Performances of The Magic Flute continue throughout August. Be aware that Susanna Phillips will replace Natalie Dessay in the role of Pamina on August 22 and 25.