Ionarts-at-Large: The Loving and Loathing of Don Giovanni in San Francisco

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from San Francisco.

With six admirable principals in very impressive ensembles, the San Francisco Opera production of Don Giovanni got off to a good start on Wednesday evening, November 2^nd. The orchestra, under conductor Nicola Luisotti, provided seamless underpinning—so much so that it seldom stood out on its own unless one paid particular attention. This is a compliment, not a criticism.

The problem with the production was its conception of Don Giovanni as a mere thug. Lucas Meacham, in fine vocal fettle, was dressed in black leather, placed against a black background, and sported anachronistic sunglasses—sunglasses of course being a theater-man’s prop of choice to signal “evil!” The error in this production is that it did not make sin attractive. People choose sin not because it is ugly, but because it looks good. Its cloak is that of light, not darkness: We hear this in Mozart's music and we also ought to see it on stage.

W.A.Mozart, Don Giovanni, R.Jacobs / Freiburg Baroque O. Weisser, Regazzo, Pendatchanska et al. Harmonia Mundi

With Don Giovanni so loutish looking, I nearly laughed every time he was referred to as an aristocrat. For women to choose a ‘bad boy’ isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but why love a thug when he isn’t even dashing? This lack of attractiveness undermined the dramatic tension of the plot. If we cannot believe in the Don's irresistible charms, how are we to believe in the women’s succumbing to them? Even in a genre in which we willingly suspend disbelief, this was unbelievable. A moment of ‘what might have been’ did peek through in Meacham's exquisite singing of Don Giovanni's serenade to Donna Elvira’s maid: the sunglasses came off and, for the first time, we could see a believable portrayal of tenderness. Or at least a portrayal of tenderness that a woman could believe. Alas, this came far too late to make the dramatic point it could have. Don Giovanni was also quite active with a large handkerchief, which he repeatedly placed over the faces of the women he was to kiss. If this signaled his dehumanization of the ladies, it also meant he got a mouthful of cotton. Why, then, do it more than once? The symbolism became too painfully obvious.

The principal scenic backdrop was provided by giant ascending and descending dark mirrors, large contraptions 16 by 6 feet in size. Lowered during the overture, they turned out to be a touch of overkill in suggesting the narcissism of Don Giovanni. The program notes by director Gabriele Lavia reveal that he meant them to convey the idea of reflection or, rather, self-reflection. Of course, of the latter there is none in Don Giovanni—which, incidentally, is the Don’s chief problem.

There were other missteps. There are a number of double entendres in this opera, and Zerlina employs many of them in her attempt to mollify her jealous fiancé Massetto. By using sexually explicit poses more appropriate to the Cabaret, Zerlina’s double entendres became, if one may say, single entendres. Making the implicit explicit always looses something—more than was made up for in the cheap laughs that were elicited and duly received.

The scenery, made up of mirrors and minimal sets, gave little sense of place. Exceptions to this were the atmospheric graveyard scene, and the closing banquet setting. Aside from Giovanni donning black, the costumes were in muted, fall colors—seasonally appropriate, if nothing else.

The acting, on the other hand, was particularly fine. Zerlina and Masetto not only looked as if they were from Central Casting, they also acted and sang their parts with particular distinction—outstandingly so in respect to the performance of Kate Lindsey, who has real spark. Shawn Mathey made his exquisitely sung San Francisco Opera debut in the role of Don Ottavio. If he has never actually sung this role on stage before, he has certainly mastered it.

A few less-than-assured moments in the second act did not detract from Ellie Dehn’s fine performance as Donna Anna. Serena Farnocchia began her Donna Elvira projecting weakly from upstage but almost immediately warmed up and gave an affecting performance—somewhat attenuated by her habit of bending at the waist and swaying while singing her arias. As Leporello, Marco Vinco was outstanding; less ‘commedia dell'arte’, more comic Gollum.

The closing, moralizing sextet was omitted (as it was at the 1788 Vienna premiere), presumably to give the interpretation a more “tragic” note. That was not entirely convincing after so much of it had been played so broadly. All in all, a production better heard than seen. The performance is repeated on November 10^th. RRR

Photo courtesy SF Opera, © Cory Weaver

In Brief: Hélène Grimaud Edition

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

• Watch Hélène Grimaud and Sandrine Piau with the Kammerorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in a concert of music by Mozart. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Listen to a Lieder recital by soprano Christine Schäfer and pianist Eric Schneider, with music by Schubert, Strauss, and Berg. [France Musique]


• Also watch Hélène Grimaud, again with the Kammerorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunk. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Les Éléments and Les Passions perform music by Jean Gilles (1668-1705), settings of the Lamentations and Requiem Mass, in the Cathedral of St-Maclou de Pontoise as part of the Festival Baroque de Pontoise. [France Musique]


• Completing the Hélène Grimaud trifecta, a concert with Jan Vogler. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Listen to violinist Sergey Khachatryan playing solo Bach at the Cité de la Musique. [France Musique]


• If you haven't read it yet, go read D. T. Max's profile of Hélène Grimaud. [The New Yorker]


• Pianist Frédéric Lagarde and Friends perform music by Martinů, Brahms, Schubert, and Michael Jarrell, in the Couvent des Cordeliers as part of the Festival de Forcalquier. [France Musique]


• Watch the finals of the Concours de chant lyrique Long-Thibaud-Crespin. [ARTE Live Web]


• From 2008, a performance of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with soprano Violeta Urmana and tenor Jon Villars and the Orchestre National de Lille, under Jean-Claude Casadesus, from the Festival de Saint-Denis. [France Musique]


• Also don't miss Daniel Wakin's write-up of the dispute between Hélène Grimaud and conductor Claudio Abbado, over which cadenza to include in her recording of a Mozart concerto. I have to say that I think Abbado is right, in that Mozart's cadenza would be preferable to the one by Busoni. However, the choice of a cadenza really is the soloist's prerogative: if Abbado could not convince Grimaud of his point of view, he should have let her play Busoni. [New York Times]
• Listen to Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott in recital from Salzburg. [France Musique]


• Watch Janine Jansen and Jean-Christophe Spinosi in a concert of Rameau, Handel, Mozart, and others. [ARTE Live Web]


• Les Arts Florissants perform the first book of Monteverdi's madrigals at the Cité de la Musique. [France Musique]


• Hélène Grimaud also gave an interview with Thierry Hilleriteau this week. He claims that she speaks French with an American accent, and she maintains that she has no plans to start conducting. [Le Figaro]


• In case you missed it at the Proms this year, you can listen to his recital by organist Thierry Escaich at Royal Albert Hall. [France Musique]


• Hear the Takács Quartet at the Théâtre de la Ville, playing Ravel, Bartók, Dvořák, and Haydn. [France Musique]

For Your Consideration: 'Mozart's Sister'

In the 1760s Leopold Mozart took his two musically talented children on a grand tour of European courts. Everyone heard them play: roving 18th-century historian Charles Burney, among others, wrote of the prodigious feats of the young Wolfgang, in particular. For indeed, encouraged by his father, the younger child excelled, in performance and composition, over the course of the family's travels, as biographer Maynard Solomon has shown in his indispensable biography of Mozart.

French actor and director René Féret, whose films up to now are likely not familiar to American audiences, has taken the childhood of the Mozart siblings as the basis for his mostly fictional film Mozart's Sister (released as Nannerl, la sœur de Mozart in France, last year). It is a strange little film, with the screenplay also by Féret, in that it ignores most of the interesting details of the life of Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart, the composer's older sister -- some of these biographical matters are listed as text at the film's conclusion -- to focus instead on the family's visit to Versailles, an episode that is elaborated into something much more important than it actually was. The Mozarts, who all speak French and are played by French actors, are stopped on their journey when the axle of their coach breaks. Taking refuge at a convent, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the director's daughter) becomes friendly with three of the daughters of King Louis XV, sent there for their education. Nannerl is sent with a letter from one of the sisters to the young man she loves, back at court.

Since the Dauphin, the girl's older brother (an enigmatic Clovis Fouin), is in mourning for the death of his young wife, Nannerl pretends to be a man when she delivers the letter to the Dauphin's friend. The Dauphin is taken by the musical talents of the young man and continues to support her inclinations -- even toward playing the violin and composing music, pursuits her severe father (a stringent Marc Barbé) discourages -- even after he learns her true identity. Leopold Mozart's favoritism for his son (the charmingly impish David Moreau) over his equally talented daughter -- tacitly supported by his wife (played by the lovely Delphine Chuillot) -- is symbolized in the movie by Nannerl's music notebook, in which Leopold notates music by Wolfgang. This is a rare moment of historicity in the film, as the music book is based on Nannerl's Notenbuch, a document in the library of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg, in which Wolfgang's youthful compositions did indeed take up his sister's pages. Alan Tyson, in his magisterial study of the Mozart autograph scores, attempted to reconstruct the Notenbuch, since many of the Wolfgang pages were sold or given away by Nannerl before she died.

Other Reviews: Washington Post | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Roger Ebert | New York Times Wall Street Journal | NPR | Movie Review Intelligence

For all of the film's beautiful visual and aural detail -- gorgeous period costumes, scenes actually shot on the grounds and in the château of Versailles, historical instruments, and ravishing musical performances all around, including newly composed pieces in Nannerl's imagined style by Marie-Jeanne Serero -- the film is mostly fantasy. Louis XV's youngest daughter, Louise Marie (played with mock solemnity by Lisa Féret, also the director's daughter), was indeed raised at the Abbey of Fontevraud, with two of her sisters, and she did indeed become a Carmelite nun, but she was fifteen years older than Nannerl and had already returned to Versailles before Nannerl was born. The Dauphin, who becomes obsessed with Nannerl in the movie, had already been married twice before Nannerl was born. The tag line in the trailer, positioning the movie as the "true story of Mozart's sister," is a bald-faced lie.

Not that this interferes with one's enjoyment of the film at all. It is a visually lush and engaging film, and it does get to the heart of the puzzle of Nannerl in its own odd way. She was devoted to her father and to her brother, seeming to accept her fate of being sidelined and eventually married. The film's fictional episode serves, if nothing else, as a reminder of how family obligations -- for prince and musician's daughter alike -- were so much stronger in this period of history. A whole family team from the Féret clan is listed in the credits, in various behind-the-scenes functions as well as on screen, so one can see how Féret père saw a little bit of himself in Leopold Mozart, the paterfamilias of a creative clan.

Mozart's Sister is playing at the Landmark E Street Cinema and other area theaters.

Knussen's Latest Turn with the NSO

Charles T. Downey, Oliver Knussen takes risks with National Symphony Orchestra
Washington Post, November 4, 2011

Knussen Conducts Knussen, London Sinfonietta

When musicians venture outside their comfort zone, the risk-taking can be thrilling. The same is true for audiences.

After British composer and conductor Oliver Knussen’s last appearance with the National Symphony Orchestra — as part of an intense CrossCurrents festival in 2009 — it was no surprise that his latest appearance at the podium of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall brought challenges as well as rewards. On Thursday night, the NSO tackled three of the four pieces on this somewhat daunting program for the first time in its history — with not quite even results.

The concert opened with “Wanderlust,” a three-movement narrative escapade by Nevada-born Sean Shepherd that premiered in 2009. Shepherd splashes sound at a large orchestral canvas, with a surfeit of percussion, to evoke desert howls or the Brittenesque surge of the ocean. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, Mo' Modern: Knussen Keeps It New (Ionarts, May 9, 2009)

Articles by Sean Shepherd (NewMusicBox)

Gergiev's Munich Shostakovich - Symphonies 1 & 4

With so many variables—questions of schedules, venue-availability, rehearsal time, and mostly: financial feasibility—to content with, it is a minor miracle that the Munich Philharmonic and the Mariinsky Orchestra were able to coordinate and realize a complete Shostakovich cycle in the Bavarian capital, conducted all by Maestro Valery Gergiev. The two orchestras share the 15 symphonies between them: Nos. 1, 4, 5, 11, 14, and 15 with the Munich Philharmonic in three programs and five concerts, the rest with the Petersburg band in four concerts.< It’s a heartening project on many levels, not the least because of the cooperation between different presenters (MPhil & München Musik) and the professional marketing which cannot be taken for granted in a cultural landscape that relies on fat subsidies and heavy bureaucracy. The concert series has a tag line (the succinctly obvious “Gergiev’s Schostakovich”), its own microsite, and (allegedly) a “listening container” in a different part of town to attract some outside attention with music samples. It must have worked to some degree, for the concert on Wednesday night the Philharmonic Hall of the Gasteig was well filled beyond its subscription crowd, if hardly sold out. Apart from bringing a much appreciated Shostakovich-focus to a town that isn’t exactly teeming with opportunities to hear his work, it is also a good project for the Munich Philharmonic: The orchestra with a tendency to get above itself will find the high profile event to nurse its perpetually bruised ego and distract from the Music Director-less transition period after Christian Thielemann’s forced departure and the tenure of octogenarian emergency patch, Lorin Maazel.

D.Shostakovich, Sy's 1 & 15, V.Gergiev / Mariinsky Orchestra Mariinsky Live D.Shostakovich, Symphony No.4, K.Kondrashin / Staatskapelle Dresden PROFIL Haenssler

The first concert in the series started appropriately enough with Shostakovich’s First Symphony. Yes, it’s a student work, but that doesn’t make it DSCH-juvenilia and the catchy work remains understandably among the most popular of his symphonies. Gergiev’s first movement suggested a classical effort, shying away—for the most part—from the bombast and grim determination of DSCH’s later work or the Soviet Shostakovich performance tradition à la Kondrashin, Mravinsky, Rozhdestvensky, and Sanderling. The fact that the performance was coherent, tight, and transparent was all the more impressive with an orchestra that isn’t used to interpret Gergiev’s odd, beat-less conducting style which looks like something of a cross between an inebriated seal policing traffic on Piccadilly Circus and ‘The Dance of The Dying Marabou’. The slow third movement in particular had its searing moments, the finale unleashed some late fury welded, as always in this work, to lament, and the many soloists absolved themselves of their task with distinction.

Not among the popular favorites is Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. The neglect is hard to explain, because it can be one of his great symphonies. I suppose it is more difficult—both to play and to grasp—than the First, and probably also than the Fifth and Seventh. It is slow-going and needs more help than any of these to come off. Likely more damaging to its reputation are, or were, the mildly disparaging remarks Shostakovich made about it, though. When Kirill Kondrashin first performed it in 1961 from the reconstructed score after almost twenty years after the initially planned but cancelled premiere, he called it a defective, verbose failure, although ‘with bits that I like’. But as Ian MacDonald suggests in The New Shostakovich: “Sometimes dismissed, in the absence of any grasp of its context or motives, as an undisciplined and bombastic failure, the Fourth Symphony, properly comprehended, emerges as a triumph of intellectual control, energetic drive, and auditory imagination. At twenty-nine, Shostakovich had created a milestone in symphonism that, under any other circumstances, would have gone on to alter the course of Western Music.”

Surely its biting, broody doom and desolation are no hindrance to DSCH-enjoyment? Because this symphony, Shostakovich’s most obviously Mahlerian, has more than any other of it. A good recording (like Kondrashin’s premiere performance from Moscow or the better sounding German premiere from Dresden), or a great one (Jansons, EMI) can pave the way. And a splendid performance (i.e. Bychkov / WDRSO, 2008) should overcome any residue resistance to the Fourth. At its best it offers raw emotion, coagulated blood, vodka, and gunpowder with unearthly flutters and threatening silences, false calms, and ever tightening musical thumbscrews. There are shrieks, brutality, claws, exhaustion, climaxes, and a pounding relentlessness that, by way of a grand coda, yield to an eerie ticking-away of the symphony, a final breath and bugle call over a blood soaked battlefield on a winter dawn. Shostakovich cannot have been too displeased with the work; he recycled plenty into the equally strange-yet-fascinating 15^th Symphony.

Alas, the performance at hand was something less than all this. As he does on his recording of the Fourth (Philips), the first movement lumbered along in a way more demanding than compelling listener-concentration. Harmless trumpet snarls and unthreatening xylophone skeletons contrasted with wildly galloping Hell’s Lancers, but with uneven seams and gaps in the playing and episodic structuring, the most lasting impression of this Fourth was sheer volume. Not the worst a conductor could do, as far as an impressive experience is concerned, but not likely enough to convert new fans to this work.

Orion String Quartet

Charles T. Downey, Orion String Quartet at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, November 3, 2011

L. Kirchner, Complete String Quartets, Orion String Quartet

Have you ever had one of those nights? It happened to the Orion String Quartet on Tuesday night, at the end of its latest appearance in the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts series at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

It would have been enough for violist Steven Tenenbom to have broken a string in the first movement of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15. But when first violinist Daniel Phillips started in on the fourth movement, when he was supposed to be playing the third, one could be excused for thinking that some post-Halloween curse was in operation. The musicians, to their credit, reacted as gracefully as one can in these circumstances, by laughing at themselves. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Joe Banno, Orion String Quartet and Windscape take on the visionary Bach (Washington Post, February 17, 2011)

Stephen Brookes, The Orion Quartet (Washington Post, March 1, 2008)

Peter Philips in Exile

This article was first published at The Classical Review on November 2, 2011.

Peter Philips: An Englishman Abroad, Convivium Singers, A. Norman

English musician Peter Philips (1560-1628), unwilling to give up his Catholic faith in a society officially opposed to it, fled his native country in his twenties. Philips was not protected by the powerful, as William Byrd was, and decided not to compromise by composing music for the state-supported Anglican church and living a secret life. Like many Catholic refugees from England, he found his way to the Catholic court of Archduke Albert and his wife, Isabella, in Brussels, who were renowned patrons of the arts (among others they supported, Peter Paul Rubens was appointed their court painter). Philips’s liturgical music was not copied into the books used by choirs in England and remained largely unknown there until more recently.

Scholar Kristine K. Forney, writing about music in the Netherlands in the early 17th century in James Haar’s book European Music, 1520-1640, described Philips as one of the composers active in the Netherlands who helped make the transition in Catholic music from equal-voiced polyphony to the monodic style then in vogue in Italy. Philips likely heard early examples of this music during his brief stay in Rome, working in the English College, in the 1580s. While in Brussels, he composed three volumes of motets in the new monodic style, as well as new settings of French popular tunes, fitted to Catholic devotional texts for the education of children. Philips also served as court organist, but almost none of his liturgical works for organ survive.

This new disc is the latest in a burgeoning series by the English group, Convivium Singers, a mixed-voice choir formed in 2009, on their own self-published label. This mid-sized ensemble is composed of nearly 40 choristers from many British church programs and professional choral groups, and they have a lovely, well-balanced sound -- larger than the sort of group Philips had to work with in most cases. The selection of motets here is drawn largely from the composer’s best-known collection, Cantiones sacrae quinis vocibus (1612), motets for five voices in the old polyphonic style, likely to be among the pieces one has heard if one has ever heard any music by Philips.

The strongest performances here are from this collection, with all sections sounding equally beautiful, with instances of individual voices protruding or infelicities of intonation all extremely minor, easy to overlook and rare. With Latin texts appropriate to a broad range of feasts throughout the year, for both temporale and sanctorale feasts, this is a source of interesting polyphony for choir masters everywhere.

The large size of the ensemble is a bonus in the three motets from the Cantiones sacrae octonis vocibus (1613), in the Roman double-choir style familiar in the work of Marenzio and others, giving the broad textures a bigger, full-bodied sound. There are also four motets from the composer’s late collection Paradisus sacris cantionibus (1628), a vast assortment of the solo and ensemble motets in the monodic style. This includes experimentation with the setting of chant psalm tones (as in Confitebor tibi domine), as well as the incorporation of virtuosic vocal writing, featuring especially the lovely soprano voice of Penelope Appleyard in the most pleasing solo outing, O Maria domina nostra. Director Alexander Norman, who also contributes a fine liner essay, provides effective continuo realization at the organ on two tracks (with David Price accompanying on four others) with the resonant acoustic of Birmingham’s church of St. Alban the Martyr providing a gorgeous cushion for voices and organ.

Philips is not exactly unknown on disc, but in many cases his music has been recorded in a piecemeal fashion. The combination here of these three principal collections, in the many styles of which Philips is a neglected master, makes this an attractive introduction to the composer’s synthesis of styles at the cusp between the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Briefly Noted: Sandrine Piau

Après un rêve, S. Piau, S. Manoff (released on May 31, 2011) Naïve V 5250 | 59'

French soprano Sandrine Piau has always been a pleasure for my ears, both live in concert and on disc. Her light but still focused, never airy voice would be expected to be beautifully suited to this recital of mostly French mélodies, with favorites by Poulenc and Fauré, including the former's song that gave its title to this rather gorgeous disc -- pieces that are almost always sung best by French singers (especially Poulenc), and not only for the native pronunciation. Surprises lurk in the programming, too, such as the unexpectedly pleasing Richard Strauss Lieder, songs one would not necessarily associate with a voice like Piau's -- decidedly French-hued Strauss, to be sure, but lovely nonetheless -- and Mendelssohn songs that sound of a piece with the mostly French program. The veiled imagery of Symbolism hangs like a heavy perfume in a set of songs by Ernest Chausson, as well as in the more recent Galgenlieder (Gallows songs), composed by Vincent Bouchot (b. 1966) to surrealist poetry by Christian Morgenstern (the vocabulary of fairy tales -- the Man in the Moon and the Midnight Mouse -- is used to describe adult-oriented puzzles). New York-born pianist Susan Manoff, who has partnered Piau brilliantly before, provides the right backdrops for each song, from transparent pastel to hexed rampage.