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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Vanessa'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This production continues through August 25 at Santa Fe Opera.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Capriccio'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Angela Meade

The Festival of Song series from Performance Santa Fe continued on Sunday afternoon. Although she is not featured on the Santa Fe Opera season this summer, soprano Angela Meade is in town, and her recital at the Santa Fe Scottish Rite Center was an affair not to be missed. Since Meade is not singing opera here this year, series director and accompanist Joe Illick allowed as how she could sing some opera arias along with the art songs.

Meade's is not a voice naturally suited to the more rarefied demands of art song. Two simple and slow songs by Bellini, Vaga luna and Ma rendi pur contento, were pretty but bordering on nondescript. In other cases, like Strauss's Zueignung, she just did not need the sort of vocal power applied to the music. These were only minor flaws in what was an intense, almost overwhelming recital that reinforced the preeminence of this extraordinarily gifted soprano. Meade brought subtlety to Liszt's song Oh! quand je dors, with a pearly control of her diminuendo and a longing turn of phrase in the memorable final phrase. At the keyboard Illick was right on the money in following Meade's twists and turns of rubato, and his left hand provided plenty of dynamic drive in larger songs like Liszt's Enfant, si j'étais roi.

In songs and especially opera arias where more squillo was needed, Meade excelled, the power of her voice and plenteous breath support like a thrilling electric surge. The restlessness of Strauss's Cäcilie, the soaring high parts of Korngold's Mariettas Lied, the soaring conclusion of Strauss's Zueignung -- all hit the right mark. When composers drew on the strengths of a voice like hers, it was the best of all, as in the intense crescendo and diminuendo at the opening of Pace, pace, mio Dio, from Verdi's La forza del destino, and especially the shrieked curses at the end of that piece ("Maledizione!"). Ebben?...Ne andrò lontana from Catalani's La Wally, music used to such memorable effect in Jean-Jacques Beineix's crazy 80s film Diva, made for an equally exciting conclusion. Most sopranos who sing Victor Herbert's Art Is Calling for Me (I Want to Be a Prima Donna) as an encore would get an Ionarts Eye-Roll Award, but Meade has earned it.

The next concert in the Festival of Song series will feature soprano Leah Crocetto (August 4, 4 pm), sadly after my departure from Santa Fe.

Latest on Forbes: James MacMillan In The Countryside

Contemporary Music Festival in Neuberg an der Mürz

…Usually it is chamber music that I seek when I make musical trips into the countryside… partly because Munich – if and when I am based there – is not a terribly good place for chamber music. When based in Vienna, the situation is not quite as dire, if only for the efforts of the Wiener Konzerthaus whose chamber music cycle(s) do all the heavy lifting and whose chamber music venues – the Mozart- and Schubert-Hall – are absolute jewels… acoustically and atmospherically better than the sarcophagus-like Brahms-Saal of the the Musikverein. There’s a bit of contemporary music going on in Vienna, too, but much of that either of the fig-leaf variety (done to satisfy the abstract notion that it should be done, but with little heart behind it) or in the damp prison cell of avant-garde niche-ism (“Wien Modern”, which has thus devolved). I’ve certainly never gone as far for a contemporary music festival as Neuberg an der Mürz – which is located somewhere between Vienna and the end of the world…

->James MacMillan In The Countryside

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Perchance to Stream: 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.

• Damien Guillon conducts Le Banquet Céleste and soloists in a performance of Handel's Acis et Galatée, recorded at the Basilica of Notre-Dame for the Festival de Beaune. [France Musique]


• Watch the premiere of the production of Wagner's Parsifal, recorded at the Bayreuth Festival. [BR-Klassik]


• Also from the Festival de Beaune, Sébastien Daucé leads the ensemble Correspondances and soloists in Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers and part of Purcell's Ode to Saint Cecilia. [France Musique]


• Watch Les Arts Florissants perform Bach Cantatas at the Festival de Beaune. [ARTE]


• Watch the production of Hamlet by Franco Faccio staged at the Bregenz Festival. [ARTE]


• The ensemble Les Accents performs Vivaldi's Tamerlano at the Festival de Beaune, under the baton of Thibault Noally. [France Musique]


• From the Waldbühne, Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Berlin Philharmonic and violinist Lisa Batiashvili in music by Smetana and Dvorak. [Ö1 | Part 2]


• From the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, a performance of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. [Ö1]


• A rare performance of Francesco Cavalli's opera Veremonda, l'amazzone di Aragona, recorded by Concerto Köln at the Schwetzinger Festspiele in April. [Ö1]


• Domingo Hindoyan conducts a performance of Mascagni's bizarre opera Iris, starring soprano Sonya Yoncheva, recorded at the Festival de Radio France in Montpellier. [France Musique]


• Have a listen to some of the concerts at the Proms in London. [BBC Proms]


• A production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte from Opera Australia. [ABC Classic]


• From the Festival de Radio France, pianist Beatrice Rana plays Bach's Goldberg Variations, plus music by Corette, Boismortier, and Rebel performed by the Ensemble Meridiana, recorded at the Rougemont Festival in 2015. [France Musique]


• Music of Vivaldi and others recorded by L'Orfeo Barockorchester, under violinist Michi Gaigg, from the Brunnenthaler Konzertsommer Festival. [Ö1]


• The Orchestre Baroque de Montauban "Les Passions" and the chamber chorus Les Eléments, under Jean-Marc Andrieu, perform the modern world premiere of three grands motets by Antoine-Esprit Blanchard, recorded at the Festival de Radio France. [France Musique]