DCist: NSO @ maximum INDIA

See my review of the National Symphony Orchestra's latest concerts, published at DCist:

National Symphony Orchestra @ maximum INDIA (DCist, March 7):

Roussel, Padmâvatî (MP3)

The symphony orchestra has been dying for at least a decade. To reach new audiences, the theory goes, orchestras must innovate, explore new repertoire, come outside the concert hall. This weekend's concerts from the National Symphony Orchestra are one example of how to do just that. The program was part of the Kennedy Center's maximum INDIA festival, which we previewed earlier this week. For the occasion, the NSO commissioned a new piece from tabla player Zakir Hussain, called Concerto for Four Soloists. The chance to hear Hussain, as well as Bollywood singers Shankar Mahadevan and Hariharan, certainly brought out a large contingent of Indian listeners. Whether any first-time symphony-goers will return for other NSO concerts remains to be seen.

Music director Christoph Eschenbach is revitalizing the NSO in ways that are beginning to draw national attention to the ensemble. His adventurous programming for the Indian festival showed again why Washington listeners, and not just the regular core of subscribers, are turning out in large numbers. He paired the new work -- Indian music more or less directly from the source -- with a European work inspired by Indian music, excerpts from Albert Roussel's opera-ballet Padmâvatî. It is a work known well enough to have received a couple of recordings, but live performances are considerably rare, surprisingly so, given how lush and gorgeous the score is. The story takes place around the year 1300, when the Queen of Chittor (modern-day Chittaurgarh) chose to kill her wounded husband and immolate herself on his funeral pyre, rather than submit to an invading Mongol sultan. [Continue reading]

National Symphony Orchestra
Excerpts of Roussel, Padmâvatî
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

Other articles:
Anne Midgette, Tabla meets West as NSO's "India" concert seeks crossover convergence (Washington Post, March 4)

Art Fair Week Semi-Rundown

The nice thing about a press pass is that one gets to visit shows before the masses converge: it's easy to get spoiled. Especially during art fair week in New York. It starts off low key: me, the Mayor, about one hundred of my closest press friends and lots of antsy, nervous art dealers -- show time! According to Mayor Bloomberg, this past week's art fairs will bring in over $40 million in economic activity: the city is pleased. With those numbers maybe we should consider art education on par with math and science -- just a thought.

Armory is part spectacle, part big shopping spree. With 274 galleries it's a mall full of art for collectors. This is not the place for quiet contemplation before a purchase. On opening day everyone is on a first-name basis. I overheard several times, "that's a bit low, I'd consider if you're making a serious offer", or "I just sold that." That's not to say this is all a bad thing: galleries often dust off some really nice gems from their back rooms and display them for sale. At Armory many booths have at least one big Alex Katz portrait, an Alice Neel, de Kooning, and after last summer's retrospective at the Whitney, lots of Charles Burchfield watercolors.

The business of art reminds me of car dealers and their predecessors, the horse traders. Relationships are important, as is which collection the work could move to. Pricing is also a slippery slope: what was valued before the recession may be adjusted, but not always. A small Chantal Joffee painting, maybe 10x15", apparently went for $75,000, and a John Marin from his Weehawken Sequence in the 20's -- that's a deal.

An hour into the show and the piers were packed with artists and celebs of all shapes. It's fun for a while, when it becomes more scene than art: time for this one to move on.

My next stop was to be the Scope Art Fair, but it was so windy walking down 11th Avenue that I moved over to 10th, and karma brought me into Exit Art's big open galleries. It was a breath of fresh air to walk into Exit Art after the intensity of the Armory Show. The staff is actually very pleased to see you as you walk through the door -- wha? The cavernous space is perfect for the current exhibit of large paintings, an eight-artist show titled Geometric Days.

If only geometry were taught to me in a visual way, I could have been an Einstein by now. Geometry is not just lines and grids on a page, but a complex recipe that can bring order to our chaotic view of the world. It's all about relationships, isn't it? And how that space between, the give and take, becomes so important, and some very good painting helps the process. Exit has fabulous ongoing programing: check their site for more details; I will be back soon.


Scope Art Fair is a scruffy show, especially on opening night. It's mostly younger artists and in some cases, established galleries wondering if they made a mistake. The energy is raw as is much of the art -- a plate of raw meat, anyone? On opening night many were quite buzzed by the time I arrived, but it's fun and well worth a visit.

Pulse Art Fair's sixty-three exhibitors have a new home at the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th St. In their new venue the booth layouts and lighting make it an easy stroll -- we could do without the actual strollers though, really? As I noticed at Armory and even Scope, lots of painting, which is good for me, and more photography than in past years, which is another good thing.

The mega Internet art experience, Saatchi Online has a booth here. They choose a few artists from the hundred thousand plus in their data base, including yours truly, to show in the booth. Always pleasant to talk to, I was curious to know what kind of servers they used to carry so much content. Turns out they are riding the cloud wave. Owning and maintaining your own servers is nearly a thing of the past. Most server needs, both mega and mini, will be housed on rented server space, in Saatchi's case somewhere in Seattle. Open source clouding will be a serious debate going forward: stay tuned.

Of the many other fairs going on this past week, I wish I could have made it to Ed Winkleman's Moving Image, an exhibit of contemporary video art. I heard very good comments, but my time was limited. Ed's gallery is always a must stop for me, so I hope Moving Image returns next year. As always, more art fair images on my Flickr account, and Hrag Vartanian and company have done a very thorough and entertaining job covering everything over at Hyperallergic.

In Brief: Like a Lion Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Heather Raffo, the playwright of 9 Parts of Desire, will write a libretto for a new opera by composer Tobin Stokes, to be premiered by City Opera Vancouver in June 2012. The story will be based on the experiences of U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Christian Ellis in the Battle of Falujah in Iraq in 2004. [Straight.com]


• With hat tip to Boing Boing, someone had the brilliant idea to train greyhounds to be "listening dogs," that is, to sit patiently and "listen" non-judgmentally as children learn to read aloud. [The Guardian]


• With hat tip to Tyler Cowen, just what is the "yoga" practiced by so many Americans, and how far back do its traditions go? [Open]


• No one here at Ionarts thought that we would actually be hearing James Levine conduct when the Boston Symphony Orchestra comes to Washington later this month. Sadly, it is much worse than we feared: he will step down from the BSO altogether in September. [New York Times]


• Norman Lebrecht still thinks that Riccardo Chailly may be next in line to replace Levine in Boston: if true, Boston listeners are lucky indeed. [Slipped Disc]


• A friend from South Dakota passes along the news that Andre Larson, the director and founder of the National Music Museum at the University of South Dakota, is retiring. As my friend puts it, there is this amazing collection of musical instruments, now totaling over 15,000 instruments, many of them rare and priceless -- "at the end of the world," in Vermillion, S.Dak. [Argus Leader]

Padmavati And Other Crossover Adventures at the NSO

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.

For the Washington, D.C. celebration of India—“Maximum India,” the National Symphony Orchestra programmed a concert suite version of Albert Roussel’s opera, Padmavati, and the première of Indian composer Zakir Hussain’s Concerto for Four Soloists at the Kennedy Center on the evening of March 3rd.

Generally ignorant of Indian music, I confess I came Thursday night for Roussel, a French composer of the first half of the twentieth century, whose works I greatly admire. Roussel wrote Padmavati in 1917 after a trip to India had impressed him deeply with the lore of this queen who preferred the self-immolation of suttee with her dead husband to the attentions of the Muslim Mongol conqueror Alaouddin (circa 1300 AD).

Roussel considered Padmavati a pivotal work of his “transitional period” during which, he said, “the style changes, the harmonic sequences become bolder and harsher, [and] the Deubussian flavor has completely disappeared.” One must know that his preceding works, such as the First Symphony, were steeped in Impressionism and bathed in lush harmonies. Four years prior to Padmavati, Roussel had written Evocations, a triptych for soloists, choir, and orchestra, an almost hallucinatory recollection of India and its holy Hindu sites. It was an early sign of Roussel’s ability to take on major subjects with massive forces that could erupt in almost barbaric power without losing a sense of refinement and control. Padmavati fulfills the promise of Evocations.

Roussel conceived his opera on a vast scale for large orchestra, chorus, ballet troupe, and challenging soloists’ parts—the expense of which is one reason why it is seldom seen. But at least it can be heard in concert version or, here at the Kennedy Center, in two suites. The program notes, other than noting that this was the Washington première, indicate nothing on who arranged these suites, but they are without chorus, or soloists except for Padmavati herself. What we end up with are the orchestral preludes to the two acts, Padmavati’s long “Il est trop tard . . .” solo, and other orchestral music. Since the chorus is a major figure in the opera (and in some of the music redacted for these suites), this is a grievous (but economical) omission. I would hate for anyone to think that these suites, despite their orchestral brilliance, give a true measure of this opera’s worth.

Read more »

More Hasse: Te Deum

J. A. Hasse, Te Deum / Sacred works, Sächsisches Vocalensemble, Batzdorfer Hofkapelle, M. Jung (released on September 28, 2010) cpo 777 462-2 | 68'24"

We draw attention to the music of Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783) when we can, but there are not that many opportunities to hear it performed, especially live. This recent release came out at the same time as another Hasse disc, on the Oehms label, and it falls into about the same category: a mostly pleasing performance, with plenty of charm as well as historical interest to offset a few infelicities. Much of Hasse's sacred music is in the rather plain style imitated in countless Mass settings by Haydn and Mozart: mostly homophonic chorus in alternation with solo lines for members of a solo vocal quartet, with decorated orchestral accompaniment. He provides some diversion with a few interesting solo and duet movements, like the tenor-bass duet that opens the setting of the hymn Tantum ergo in E-flat, followed by a soprano-alto duet. All of the movements recorded here make for pleasant and diverting listening, and occasionally Hasse hits on something truly beautiful, such as the aria-like Ora pro nobis, for mezzo-soprano, that serves as central section of the Regina Caeli, and the gorgeous second part of the concluding Agnus Dei in the Litaniae Lauretanae, with its pulsating bass under arching suspensions in the vocal parts. The instrumental contributions are rich and varied, easier on the ears than the occasionally flawed sound of the chorus and an uneven vocal quartet.

More 'Butterfly': Second Cast

Pinkerton (Thiago Arancam) and Butterfly (Ana María Martínez) on their wedding night, Madama Butterfly, Washington National Opera (photo by Scott Suchman)

It appears that Washington National Opera will capitalize on its latest production of North America's most often staged opera, Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Even though the company has scheduled an intense, exhausting schedule of fourteen performances (including one featuring singers from the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists program), most of the weekends have already sold out, and the remaining weekday performances are selling briskly. As already noted in my review of the first cast at opening night, Philippe Auguin is leading the orchestra in a nuanced rendition of the score, ground-shaking when it needs to be but also full of the sometimes delicate wash of colors Puccini painted with, which remains the best reason to hear one of these performances. The production is pretty enough, although the spinning parasols in the hands of the female chorus take the staging a bit too close to what one would expect in The Mikado ("Three little maids from school"). The constantly sliding Japanese screen doors, eventually ornamented with vintage bits of Americana, help disguise the use of a single, rather bland set but do begin to grate on the eyes. The staging of the opera's catastrophic conclusion, which hews close to the directions in the libretto and score, is devastatingly effective.

The choice between the two casts is fairly close, based on the second cast's opening performance on Tuesday night, with neither of them being so remarkable as to warrant an unqualified recommendation. If pressed to make a choice, I would go with Catherine Naglestad in the first cast, a much stronger voice for the title role. We have greatly admired the fine soprano Ana María Martínez on the stage at Santa Fe Opera and have followed her highly praised exploits in Europe the past few years. Her voice did not sound quite ready for Butterfly, however, as she shied away from many of the high notes (the one toward the end of the opening scene was so evanescent as to be almost inaudible) -- Scott Cantrell had similar reservations about her debut in the role last fall at Houston Grand Opera. As for her acting of the role, Martínez's coy, even hammy teenager was miles away from the more dignified, even stiff Naglestad: one wonders which of the two is closer to what director Ron Daniels envisioned. It is possible that he encouraged the singers to go in vastly different directions.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, WNO's second "Butterfly" cast offers vague passion (Washington Post, March 3)

The rest of the cast was able but no more extraordinary than the first cast. Thiago Arancam, whom we have admired in San Francisco, had an oddly swallowed tone as Pinkerton, almost exactly what we remembered from him in Carmen a couple years ago, and seemed more a bewildered kid than a callous sexual tourist. He definitely had ping at the top, with a sobbing, wailing quality that could be affecting, but he tended to lunge at the big notes rather than knowing how to build to them, to create a larger shape out a bunch of small ones. His stage movement was similarly episodic, not as stiff as Alexey Dolgov in the first cast but also not as immediate vocally. The two supporting roles, Ning Liang's Suzuki and Hyung Yun's Sharpless, were no better or worse than their counterparts on opening night.

Washington National Opera's production of Madama Butterfly continues through March 19, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

DCist: Madama Butterfly @ WNO

See my review of the Washington National Opera's production of Madama Butterfly, published at DCist:

DCist at the Opera: 'Madama Butterfly' (DCist, March 1):

The Washington National Opera is going to make it through the financial crisis, thanks to being absorbed into the Kennedy Center. It has meant some sacrifices, not least of which is some less adventurous programming this season and next. Such is the company's latest production of Puccini's gorgeous but overdone Madama Butterfly, the most often produced opera in North America, according to Opera America.

This is WNO's third production of the work, just in the last ten years, and it happens to coincide with another production this month at Virginia Opera. So while opera regulars may want to sit this one out, it is the sort of popular work that is a fine introduction to the genre for a neophyte. In fact, WNO's obsessive rotation of the Puccini chestnuts -- La Bohème, Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Turandot, Butterfly -- is a constant throughout the company's history: maybe it is time to bring back La Rondine or Il Trittico, or even to get around to staging La fanciulla del West for a change.

What makes this production, heard on Saturday night, worth your time is that WNO's new music director, Philippe Auguin, is in the pit, working more magic. [Continue reading]

Puccini, Madama Butterfly
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House

Other articles:

• Anne Midgette, Anne Midgette reviews Washington National Opera's 'Madama Butterfly' (Washington Post, February 28)
  
• Tim Smith, Washington National Opera delivers affecting production of 'Madama Butterfly' (Baltimore Sun, February 28)
  
• Terry Ponick, Washington National Opera's triumphant 'Butterfly' (Washington Times, February 28)
  
• Susan Dormady Eisenberg, Soprano Ana Maria Martinez Prepares to Sing Butterfly at Washington National Opera (Huffington Post, February 28)
  
• Barbara Mackay, A powerful 'Butterfly' takes flight (Washington Examiner, March 1)

Flórez Triumphans

Bel Canto Spectacular, J. D. Flórez Great Tenor Arias, J. D. Flórez Verdi, Rigoletto, D. Damrau, J. D. Flórez, Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden

The inaugural concert in the Placido Domingo Celebrity Series -- one of the shrewd cost-saving measures instituted at Washington National Opera to counter the effects of the economic downturn -- featured the brilliant Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez on Sunday afternoon. It was a major event, with tickets sold out long ago (in fact, only to subscribers and high-level donors), and critics had to beg, borrow, or steal to get a seat in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Luckily I had to resort only to the first of those options, being spared the moral dilemma of choosing between a second mortgage and larceny in order to attend. When Flórez made his WNO debut in 2006, in Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, he had just begun to make a name for himself internationally: he has since gone on to the sort of stardom that few opera singers ever achieve. If it will be difficult to imagine him coming back to Washington for another production anytime soon, no one who loves fine singing wanted to miss the chance to hear him again, especially in a program that featured his strongest repertoire -- primarily Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi, with a few distractions thrown in for good measure.

In the first half, one had the sense that the programming was chosen to give Flórez a chance to warm up to the big money pieces later in the concert. "Pria che spunti in ciel l'aurora," from Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto, is not all that memorable, although its slow beginning featured Flórez's sensitive phrasing, often sustained by remarkable control through places where other singers would breathe. There were many more fireworks to be enjoyed in Rossini's "Cessa di più resistere," the aria usually cut from performances of The Barber of Seville and reworked by the composer in La Cenerentola: perfectly tuned staccato notes, florid runs, and all. "Pietoso al lungo pianto," from Verdi's Un Giorno di Regno, had less to notice, except for a few nice high notes. Guest conductor Alessandro Vitiello, in his company debut, had a competent hand at the podium, without great inspiration, it must be said. He happily kept the tempos fleet in the three overtures from the same operas as each aria on the first half, providing little more than time filler to allow Flórez to rest (just how many notes could Verdi write for the damn triangle?). Concertmaster Oleg Rylatko had a pretty enough turn on the solo part of the "Méditation" from Massenet's Thaïs, with a somewhat electrified vibrato.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Juan Diego Florez at Opera House: With metallic voice, tenor sets gold standard (Washington Post, March 1) Tim Smith, Juan Diego Florez inaugurates WNO's Placido Domingo Celebrity Series (Baltimore Sun, March 2)

By the second half, Flórez was running on all cylinders, opening with a luminous rendition of "Ah, lève-toi, soleil" from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. Three selections from Verdi's Rigoletto (the most famous one kept inevitably for the encores) were probably the closest Washington will ever come to seeing Flórez's Duke of Mantua, a role that he wisely chose to preview on his home territory in Lima and then sing only in a few carefully chosen houses. In concert, he gave Questa o quella little nuances that made what is a simple song seem more substantial, while "Ella mi fu rapita" again had some strikingly long phrases. Like most tenors, a lot of the placement of Flórez's high notes is nasal: while it was noticeable in some cases, he is much more successful than some other tenors (Lawrence Brownlee comes to mind) at sweetening the tone, although he keeps it rapier-sharp in melismatic passages. The nasality certainly came across in the famous series of high Cs in "Ah! mes amis," from Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment, which was in effect the first encore, followed by "Una furtiva lagrima" from L'elisir d'amore and "La donna è mobile," conspicuously missing from the Rigoletto set earlier in the program. For the final encore, he turned to his popular CD Sentimiento Latino for La flor de la canela, a Criollo waltz by Peruvian singer Chabuca Granda.