Perchance to Stream: Back from Santa Fe Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio and online video from the week gone by. After clicking to an audio or video stream, you may need to press the "Play" button to start the broadcast. Some of these streams become unavailable after a few days.

• Listen to the performance of Verdi's Il Trovatore, starring Roberto Alagana (Manrico) and Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Azucena), recorded at the Chorégies d'Orange. [France Musique]


• From the Salzburg Festival, Franz Welser-Möst conducts a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio, starring Jonas Kaufmann and Adrianne Pieczonka. [ORF | RTBF | BR-Klassik]


• Watch the performance of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia from Glyndebourne. [Glyndebourne]


• John Eliot Gardiner conducts Monteverdi's L'Orfeo with the Monteverdi Choir. [BBC Proms]


• Pianist Daniil Trifonov plays a recital of music by Liszt, recorded at La Roque d'Anthéron. [France Musique]


• Listen to the performance of Wagner's Die Walküre from the Bayreuth Festival. [BR-Klassik]


• Listen to the performance of Wagner's Götterdämmerung from the Bayreuth Festival. [Radio Clásica | Act 2 | Act 3]


• Leonardo Garcia Alarcon conducts the RIAS Chamber Choir Berlin and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in music by Cherubini, Onslow, and Beethoven. [France Musique]


• Listen to Daniele Rustioni conduct a performance of Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, starring Paolo Bordogna (Don Geronio) and Nino Machaidze (Fiorilla), recorded in Turin this past March. [ORF]


• Le Concert Spirituel and soprano Katherine Watson, under conductor Hervé Niquet, perform the Grands Motets of Rameau. [France Musique]


• Listen to the performance of Verdi's Requiem, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Concert Association of the Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, soprano Angela Meade, mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, and other soloists, all conducted by Donald Runnicles. [BBC Proms]

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Production Photos from the Bayreuth Festival's Siegfried

...Wolfgang Koch, who continues his smarmy, drunken, sleazy, seedy Wotan with most admirable gusto and believability, certainly shows that it’s not for lack of will or skill on his part… seeing that he gets plenty to do in the third act, when he summons Erda. It’s perhaps the most touching moment of this Siegfried, when the washed-up Wotan, ex-lover, gets together with Erda, his aged, long-time favorite ho, for a spaghetti dinner and too much wine, in a scene full of recriminations and regrets and make-up blow jobs. When Wotan-Wanderer is supposed to pay up (the waiter catching Erda in flagrante), he realizes he’s just a bit short on cash and with the words “Dort seh’ ich Siegfried nahn!“ (“Woha, I think Siegfried approaches!”) he’s off, properly welshing and leaving Erda with the bill and the audiences in stitches. It’s not the only moment that garnered laughter, but there could have still been more, seeing that Siegfried is supposed to be a comedy and that Castorf certainly has the irreverent streak that lends itself to comedy....

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Production Photos from the Bayreuth Festival's Walküre

After coming off the Motel / Route 66 Rheingold, overloaded and exciting, weird and captivating, Frank Castorf’s Walküre must seem conventional. Or maybe it should be called Aleksandar Denić’s Walküre – because what dominates this first day of the Ring is the massively impressive set of a Wild East farm that slowly turns into a Baku oil rig, celebrating “Oil Workers’ Day” in bold Azerbaijani lettering. (If you browse the “Petroleum industry in Azerbaijan” Wikipedia page, you get nearly as good an idea of the set design as looking at the production photos.) It’s an impressive, massive, sprawling wooden construction on the revolving stage with a tower higher than the proscenium arch, a barn with the whole front opening up to reveal the insides, and a raised patio with connecting flights of stairs. Oh, and two live turkeys grace act one, in a cage to the side, behind chicken wire, being fed by Sieglinde. Kwangchul Youn has really come into his own as an actor – and his Hunding was menacing yet curiously and pleasingly dignified, which also goes some way in describing his vocal contribution....

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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'Salome' / 'La Finta Giardiniera': My Heart Belongs to Daddy

Charles T. Downey, Powerful “Salome” and problematic Mozart at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 8

Mozart, La Finta Giardiniera, S. Karthäuser, A. Penda, Freiburger Barockorchester, R. Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 2012)

Why do people laugh so much in performances of Richard Strauss’s Salome? If anything the amount of tittering increased in the performance of the company’s new production heard on Thursday night. There are comic moments in the libretto, to be sure, but too many people laugh in the wrong places at parts of the opera that are, or should be, the most disturbing.

English director Daniel Slater’s powerful staging, updated to the turn of the 20th century and based on the sexual identity theories and dream interpretation of Sigmund Freud, eventually silenced most of the laughter...

[Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, Santa Fe Opera Offers ‘The Daughter of the Regiment,’ ‘Rigoletto’ and ‘Salome’ (New York Times, August 7)

John Stege, Salome Agonistes (Santa Fe Reporter, July 22)

James M. Keller, Salome — hell hath no fury (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 19)

Dip Your Ears, No. 203 (Jennifer Koh in Bach and Beyond)

J.S.Bach, E.Ysaÿe, K.Saariaho, M.Mazzoli, “Bach & Beyond Part 1”, Partitas Nos.2 & 3, Sonata op.27/2, Nocturne, Dissolve, O My Heart Jenifer Koh cedille

Bach and Just a Little Beyond

Jennifer Koh’s Bach’n’Beyond CD, the first of three steps toward a complete Sonatas & Partitas set, works best as a recital. The main ingredients, the E major and D minor Partitas and the Ysaÿe Sonata op.27/2, are part of great, greater musical sets that deserve dedicated recordings most collectors already own. If not: Milstein (DG) or Podger in Bach, Zehetmair or Kavakos in Ysaÿe. That said and skipping Koh’s rationalizing PR-babble (“connection to present world through historical journey…”), it’s a darkly enjoyable 80 minute program with obvious audible links between the Bach, the superbly played Ysaÿe (stunning bagpipe emulation in the Sarabande!), and Missy Mazzoli’s simplistic-lovely-harmless Bach-infused Dissolve, O My Heart. The pivot is Kaija Saariaho’s five-minute breathy-fragile Nocturne.

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Steve Jobs Opera for Santa Fe

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe company commissions an iOpera: Should there be an app for that?
The Classical Review, August 7

Santa Fe Opera celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2016, when the season will focus on three great operas of the 20th century: Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, Strauss’s Capriccio, and Samuel Barber’s Vanessa.

Although next summer will not feature a world premiere, the company announced Wednesday that American composer Mason Bates will create a new opera in Santa Fe, in collaboration with librettist Mark Campbell for the 2017 season...

[Continue reading]

Winter in Summer: Matthias Goerne at Tanglewood

We welcome this review from Tanglewood, an Ionarts exclusive, by guest contributor Seth Arenstein.

Schubert, Winterreise, M. Goerne, C. Eschenbach (Harmonia Mundi, 2014)

When an established musician presents a work in concert that he or she has recorded, the result often is the same or a similar interpretation of the work. To his credit, the highly regarded German baritone Matthias Goerne did something different Wednesday evening at Tanglewood as he performed Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey), a favorite of this site.

Not that Goerne’s 2014 recording of Winterreise, with Christoph Eschenbach on piano, is faulty, far from it. Yet in a heavily repetitive world, it was a treat to experience a master artist like Goerne performing a different interpretation, perhaps reacting to his new thoughts about Winterreise or to those of his pianist this night, Markus Hinterhäuser. From the piano’s opening notes of “Gute Nacht” (Good Night), the first of twenty-four Wilhelm Müller poems that Schubert put to music in this cycle, one could sense this was going to be a more nuanced, slower (dare we say slightly warmer?) Winterreise than is heard on the Goerne-Eschenbach recording.

To be fair, it was not a wholesale change from Goerne’s basic interpretation of Winterreise, which tells the dark, gloomy story about a man whose lover has left him. In recordings, Goerne tends to emphasize the insanity of this lovesick narrator. Indeed, Goerne expressed insanity at moments in his performance this evening, especially in the first twelve songs. By the night’s end, though, Goerne’s narrator sounded less mad than angry, though it was a controlled anger. For example, in “Der Leiermann” (The Hurdy-gurdy Player), the final song, Goerne conveyed the image of a dejected character more than an insane one. In his most affecting moment, Goerne whispered the narrator’s words compassionately, describing a poor, old man, standing barefoot on the ice, playing tunes on a hurdy-gurdy as best he can with frozen fingers.

Goerne was in stellar voice from the start, easily filling the 1200-seat Ozawa Hall with a full, warm sound in several registers. His knowledge of Müller’s words and sensitivity to Schubert’s music were apparent. Goerne’s “Mut!” (Courage) was lively but not overdone, his control and tone in “Das Wirsthaus” (The Inn) were exemplar. Pianist Hinterhäuser, who will become artistic director of the Salzburg Festival in 2016, was a revelation. While never overpowering Goerne, his playing was muscular and sensitive, leading Goerne and following him with great musicality. His light touch in the opening bars of “Die Krähe” (The Crow) made it easy to imagine a bird flying around the narrator’s head. Most effective were his sense of rhythm and use of rubato, particularly in “Die Wetterfahne” (The Weathervane) and “Irrlicht” (Will-o’-the-wisp).

Other Articles: Michael Cooper, Memories of Tanglewood on Its 75th Birthday (New York Times, August 7)

An interesting touch: Performing the work without an intermission, Goerne and Hinterhäuser varied the space between songs. Most began after a brief pause. A few, however, nearly bled one into the next, starting just seconds after the previous song ended. It was an interesting artistic choice by the artists, who seemed to be in interpretive sync all evening.

Something else you miss from listening to Goerne’s recordings is his stage mannerism. He tends to sing in the direction of the piano. As such, he spent much of the night looking in Hinterhäuser’s eyes, communicating with his pianist, instead of facing the audience. While slightly disturbing, if this is the price for a memorable Winterreise, I’ll pay it gladly. The house, which sadly was only 75% full, concurred. Reacting thunderously, Goerne and Hinterhäuser were recalled to the stage three times.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Cold Mountain'

Ensemble in Cold Mountain, 2015, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)

C. Frazier, Cold Mountain (Grove Press, 1997)

Charles T. Downey, “Cold Mountain” is a long, bleak night in Santa Fe Opera premiere (The Classical Review, August 6)

Few moments equal the excitement of the world premiere of a new opera. The theater darkens, and music that very few people have heard before unfolds before you.

This crucial tradition continued at Santa Fe Opera this year with the world premiere of Cold Mountain, the first opera by American composer Jennifer Higdon...

[Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, ‘Cold Mountain,’ at Santa Fe Opera, Recounts a Separated Lover’s Arduous Journey (New York Times, August 6)

Jeffrey Brown, Civil War tragedy ‘Cold Mountain’ inspires opera (PBS NewsHour, August 5)

George Loomis, Cold Mountain, Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe, New Mexico — review (Financial Times, August 5)

Paul Ingles, 'Cold Mountain' Takes Civil War Odyssey To The Opera Stage (NPR, August 5)

Thomas May, Cold Mountain Almost Reaches the Top (Musical America, August 5)

Gregory Sullivan Isaacs, Miguel Harth-Bedoya brings Jennifer Higdon’s music to life in ‘Cold Mountain’ (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 5)

John Stege, A Magic Mountain (Santa Fe Reporter, August 5)

Ray Mark Rinaldi, Santa Fe Opera ascends with Jennifer Higdon's "Cold Mountain" (Denver Post, August 4)

Rodney Punt, Jennifer Higdon’s ‘Cold Mountain’ Has World Premiere at Santa Fe Opera

David Patrick Stearns, Higdon's 'Cold Mountain' premieres in Santa Fe (Philadelphia Inquirer, August 3)

James M. Keller, ‘Cold Mountain’ opera review: Long-lost love among the ruins (Santa Fe New Mexican, August 2)