Ionarts in Santa Fe: Final Thoughts on 2008

The ideal way to review an opera production would be to attend the entire run of performances. Singers have off nights and on nights, they get sick and get better, have allergies and get over them, struggle with or get used to being at an altitude of 7,000 feet. The orchestra and the conductor get comfortable, or complacent, with the score. The staging's kinks get ironed out, and new kinks get worked into it. The whole thing becomes laden with the performers' own emotional histories, as the gigantic collaboration of an opera works its way to its inevitable end.

Reviewing an opera production from beginning to end is just not possible (or is it? *gears turning*), especially in a place like Santa Fe Opera, where the season is stretched out in repertory over such a long period. However, the rare chance to hear four of the five operas another time last week, in the company of critics from several major dailies, yielded the following second thoughts about the four successful productions.

Elizabeth Watts (Susanna), Susanna Phillips (Countess), and Mariusz Kwiecień (Count) in Le Nozze di Figaro, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

#4. Le Nozze di Figaro
The truth about how differently singers can sound on successive evenings came out the most at the second hearing of the Mozart on Saturday night, my last night at Santa Fe Opera. Elizabeth Watts sounded much stronger as Susanna, and the Countess of Susanna Phillips had more noticeable struggles with intonation, mostly a tendency toward sharpness in some of her attacks. Mariusz Kwiecień's Count was just as suave and blustery, and Isabel Leonard's Cherubino seemed more stable in terms of color and vibrato right from the start. The casting miracle of Luca Pisaroni, who sang Figaro again, after singing Tiridate in Radamisto just the previous night, continued to amaze. It is a lot to ask a singer to perform two demanding roles in such proximity, but Pisaroni held up vocally and managed to keep the two men distinctly characterized. If his Figaro had shown up with a false beard, I would hardly have been surprised.

What had seemed so effortless and natural about the staging was less so the second time around, as a number of gags and exchanges flopped. A closer look at the critical edition before the second evening made me realize that Santa Fe Opera was perhaps not using the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, or at least making some changes to it. In the terzetto "Susanna or via sortite," the NMA gives all three of those eighth-note roulades (the first up to high G, the others up to high C) to the Countess. In the Santa Fe production, the Countess sang only the first one, and the other two were given to Susanna. The comic effect was cute (Susanna muffled her mouth with her hand, realizing her high note would reveal her hiding place), and as I wrote before, Mozart thought of the two roles as somewhat musically interchangeable, which reinforces their role reversal at the end of the opera. He apparently switched many of their parts back and forth in his manuscript.

#3. Billy Budd
Teddy Tahu Rhodes sounded a little more in the right place last Thursday, with more control at the top of his voice. It was still a performance distinguished more by rough rusticity, naive of spirit and vocal refinement, than smooth power. My impression of the other two leads, the terrifying Claggart of Peter Rose and the hand-wringing Vere of William Burden, changed very little. One note on the staging that I noticed only because of seeing the production twice: the handerkerchief that Claggart takes from Billy also appears at the beginning of the opera, in Vere's hands during the prologue. Claggart holds it as a reminder of his attraction to/repulsion by Billy, Vere discovers it on Claggart's body, and keeps it in his hands during the prologue and epilogue, which take place long after the main action. It is the symbol of the motivating force of Billy's destruction, the attraction that Claggart feels to Billy.

#2. Adriana Mater
One of the things that Kaija Saariaho, Peter Sellars, and Amin Maalouf joked about at the symposium on Adriana the morning of the premiere was how Sellars' staging of Saariaho's operas disregarded so much of the composer and librettist's vision. Saariaho confided that she saw so much of L'Amour de Loin in her mind's eye and wrote long letters about it to Sellars. He responded that she was welcome to write him about it all she wanted, but he could not guarantee that he and his collaborators would use any of it, and indeed they did not. So, for Adriana she left most of her thoughts about the staging out of the discussion, with one exception. For her, the symbolism of the door to Adriana's house, its opening and closing to Tsargo, was the only thing she insisted on. Of course, there was no door in George Tsypin's set.

Monica Groop (Adriana, foreground), Pia Freund (Refka, background), and Matthew Best (Tsargo) in Adriana Mater, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

Much was made of the dreams in Adriana, which were important for Saariaho during the compositional process. Sellars set the dreams, more or less as Maalouf indicated in the libretto, except for one, the vision of Yonas that "acts as a link between Scenes 4 and 5," according to the libretto (in the typo-heavy translation by Barbara Bray, sold in the SFO gift shop):

Adriana heads for the door. Yonas sits down on the floor and buries his head in his hands. Then they both freeze, and in the somber red light that always heralds a dream sequence a kind of sacrificial is enacted in slow motion. A masked character whom we identify as Yonas, tears off the others' masks and throws them on the fire. It's as if he were stripping them of their souls, and they all collapse one after the other, in a blaze that at once destroys and purifies. A short dream this time, without any commentary -- only music, and perhaps a few recaps of previous words and phrases, including some from the preceding scene.

Now, to be fair to Sellars, that is a stage direction that hardly takes into account the difficulty of actually staging it -- not unlike the first dream sequence, in which Tsargo is supposed to change into a bottle (he did not, in Sellars' staging). For this transition, Sellars instead has Yonas collapse to the floor, with his hand clasped over his own face, representing the oppressive thought of his father's blood in his own body. He writhes on the floor that way, as the music becomes frantic, and then rises for the following scene with Refka. There is another Sellars addition at the end of the first act, where Adriana asks herself, "Which will my child turn out to be -- Cain or Abel?" During the orchestral postlude that follows, Adriana and Refka are on the roof of the apartment and they track with their eyes something invisible that circles around them in the sky. Nothing like that is indicated in the libretto, but the sense of a forbidding omen is an effective addition by Sellars. Unfortunately, Sellars also could not avoid his worst cliché, what I have called the high school show choir hand movements, which always seemed to undermine emotionally intense scenes in Adriana just as they have in his other productions.

The score continued to unfold in my ears on a third hearing. It opens with a crashing opening cluster, followed by a tense introduction in which what I have been calling the "sighing motif" is almost immediately introduced, downward glissandi in flute and then chorus on "Oh." Adriana's opening Rondeau ("Quand les yeux de la cité se ferment, je dévoile ma voix") should become an adventurous option for mezzo-soprano recitals. The piece has a sinuous, memorable main melody that is repeated -- the libretto's stage directions indicate that "a young woman leans against the wall of her house, relaxing at the end of the day and singing a kind of traditional rondeau full of longing and passion"). The word cité usually means apartment block instead of city, and it is especially used of HLM buildings, or public housing, which probably tells us something about what Maalouf envisioned for Adriana's home. The opening vista, with the curtain at 8:30 instead of 9 pm, was that stunning, clear view of sunset over the Jémez Mountains.

More little solos peeped out of the larger texture -- cello and violin, suspended cymbal (a sort of snappy jazz flavor at the opening of Scene 4), snare drum (which rattles away in association with martial words in the libretto), insectoid rustles and tremors from various percussion instruments or from the "Ts-ts-ts" of the chorus. The "regret motif," an accented downward half-step, is first really heard in the score just after the wild, dissonant crashes of the rape scene, in the transition between Scenes 2 and 3. Saariaho spoke about the importance of heartbeats in the score at the symposium, saying that each character had a pulse that accompanied him or her throughout the score, changing as it went along. I associated this pulsing motif with the idea of regret, because it is sung, very clearly, with the words "J'aurais dû" (I should have) in the final scene, but it could also represent the pulse of Yonas, at the moment of conception after the rape scene. Another motif, of seven to eight repeated notes, appears in the third scene but is less pervasive, and this could be the baby's pulse, too, as it appears when we see Adriana pregnant. I am still waiting for a chance to see the score on paper.

Laura Claycomb (Polissena) and Luca Pisaroni (Tiridate) in Radamisto, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

#1. Radamisto
Some more traditionally minded viewers, including a commenter or two here, hated David Alden's staging of this Handel opera. Truth be told, it was not all that postmodern, was visually quite beautiful, and made even more sense after a second viewing. Contacts at the company felt sure that the sculpture of the elephant was surmounted by a leopard -- not a bear, as I originally thought. George Loomis observed in his review that the leopard is triumphant over the elephant when Tiridate is at the height of his power, only to be strung up, pierced with arrows, at the moment of his downfall. As noted in my review, Alden's decisions, although sometimes radical, are usually based on careful reflection.

The singing remained among the most stunningly virtuosic displays of the season, especially David Daniels' Radamisto and Laura Claycomb's Polissena. The latter's performance was occasionally marred by occasional flatness, very slight, the embellishments of "Barbaro, partirò" were just as breath-taking, especially the plunge from an extremely high to an extremely low note in the cadenza. As mentioned above, Luca Pisarino's brilliance and stamina in a sensational double casting was nothing short of exceptional. Tomorrow, some thoughts about Santa Fe Opera's 2009 season next summer.

Performances of all five operas of this summer's season continue at Santa Fe Opera through August 23. The best of the year's apprentice singers will present opera scenes on the next two Sundays, August 10 and August 17. There is still time to get to Santa Fe if you can.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Site Santa Fe

Of course, we did one or two things in New Mexico that had nothing to do with opera. On a Sunday afternoon, I took a walk through Site Santa Fe, the New Mexico biennial held in a large exhibition space down by the old railyards. Santa Fe, and New Mexico in general, is a Mecca for artists, but much of the art sold there tends toward predictable kitsch bought up by tourists. Nothing wrong with art being a commodity: artists have always known their buyers and catered to them.

The idea behind this year's biennial is to divorce art from its price tag, something that flies in the face of the rampant commercialism that pervades art galleries at the highest levels. Site Santa Fe yields control of the biennial to a guest curator, and for the seventh edition this year, that duty fell to Lance Fung. He asked a host of galleries around the world to give him the names of their best emerging artists, from which he selected his roster of twenty-two. They were invited to Santa Fe, given a strict budget of $7,500, and told to create something specific to the exhibition space or to another site around the city. Finally, forget the red dots: all of the artwork had to disintegrate or otherwise be destroyed or unmade -- not sold -- at the end of the show.

Someone taking the plunge, Manifest Destiny by Piero Golia
Fung had the exhibition space redesigned by New York architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, who cut up the warehouse-like building into sections by installing a set of ramps that meander obliquely through it (watch these videos to get a better picture). Most of that upper space was not utilized by the artists, many of whom preferred to take their work to other sites, and it was left somewhat gloomy and unlit. The ultimate rebellion against the straitjacket of the building design was expressed by Piero Golia, an Italian who now lives in Los Angeles. For Manifest Destiny, he sawed off the end of one of the ramps, daring visitors to jump from it onto a large set of foam mattresses below. I did not try it myself, but I saw other people do it -- someone even put a video of himself jumping on YouTube (see above).

In fact, subversion became the unintended theme of the biennial, as the artists found ways to play with the imposed strictures, sometimes riffing on the local art and sense of history. Australian Nick Mangan took over an old building, A1 Southwest Stone, to create a false archeological dig, an ironic and spot-on bit of mimicry. We had to make special arrangements to see the installation (inside and to the side of the building), as it is in a neighborhood a short drive from the exhibition space and the building is kept locked. Mangan even ran an article in a local newspaper accusing vandals of stealing artifacts from his dig, things that were never there, of course. Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni convinced a local art dealer to give them a kitschy bronze statue, which they partially melted down and subverted into The Abduction, which shows the original composition refashioned into a post-UFO encounter. Martí Anson went to Museum Hill, where the collections are focused largely on folk and Native American art, and built a large replica of a flour mill that is about to be torn down in his hometown in Catalonia. The piece plays with the idea of destruction and entropy at the heart of the biennial.

The best use of space was by Italy's Studio Azzurro, who installed an interactive video, The Fourth Ladder, on an inclined wall in the center of the exhibition space. Local New Mexican characters stroll up the incline, but if a viewer reaches out and touches one of the images, the figure will turn and speak or sing. Were the artists reaching out to the viewer? the local community? other artists? The Bulgarian Luchezar Boyadjiev used his $7,500 to attach several $10 bills to the wall, with names drawn at random from the Santa Fe phonebook. If you go into the exhibit and see your name on Off-SITE(s), you can take the $10, thereby revealing something written underneath. The whole concept is explained by a trained guide, who stands by the work faithfully. Santa Fe residents should note that several $10 bills remain on the wall, waiting to be claimed. Of course, that amount is exactly what it will cost you to enter the biennial.

The theme of the violation of space is the most compelling, and several pieces wound through the building in one way or another. Story Line is a mud sculpture by Eliza Naranjo More, Nora Naranjo Morse, and Rose B. Simpson. Made of clay, willows, waddle, linseed oil, etc., it has a disturbing organic look to it, as if an immense brown worm or a turd has fallen from the sky and exploded. From its site of entry it twists and loops through the opening hall. Mandla Reuter's Fourth Wall is an electric cable that is supposedly actually carrying a very powerful live current. From its entry point near the start of the exhibit it winds through the space above the viewer, ending up at a large fusebox at the back of the warehouse. Viewers are invited to throw the tantalizing red switch, but nothing happens. At first, it seemed that the live current must be controlling Nadine Robinson's Tri-Christus, three large Xs, covered with light fixtures, installed on the building's roof. Now, if you could have actually turned those lights on and off with that switch, we would have had a winner.

Other Reviews: Zane Fischer, The SITE Stuff (Santa Fe Reporter, July 23) Blake Gopnik, A Site for Thinking Outside the Box (Washington Post, July 6) Peter Goddard, Artists make their mark, then erase it (Toronto Star, June 22) Jori Finkel, Welcome to New Mexico. Now Create. (New York Times, January 27)

Some of the pieces in the show seemed unimaginative -- too confrontational, too political, too much like art school theorizing. Shi Qing's food art piece Mongolian Messenger involved a Mongolian chef brought to Santa Fe to fuse his own cooking tradition with local cuisine. Hiroshi Fuji's sculptures, made of discarded plastic bottles or recycled children's toys, are fanciful but ultimately a little fluffy. (Mockups are shown at the main site, but the bottle sculptures have been hanging from the lamps in the parking lot of the Santa Fe Opera, leading many an opera visitor to ask why there is garbage hanging from the lights by their car.) The excitement and the disappointment are both the result of the curator's approach: by chance, some of the works were entwined by similarities that were probably random, and others struck me as desperate grasps to deal with the themeless demand of the show. In any case, each artist had the freedom to think only about what interested him or her, within the budget limitation: no one will ever have to think about how to sell these works. Probably just as well.

Site Santa Fe remains open to the public until January 4, 2009.

Balthus Anniversary Exhibit

Balthus, La Toilette de Kathy, 1936, Centre Pompidou

Balthazar Klossowski, dit Balthus was born 100 years ago this year. The Fondation Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland, has opened a retrospective of the painter's works. The museum is close to Rossinière, where the painter spent his final years, and Leonardo Gianadda and Balthus were friends. The show brings together 150 works, two-thirds of them paintings, thanks to the remarkable generosity of loaning institutions, both museums and private collectors. Only La montagne and The Guitar Lesson are missing. Philippe Dagen was there to review it (La peinture romanesque de Balthus, August 5) for Le Monde (my translation):

Their absence is made up for by the appearance of rarities from private collections, like a copy of a part of the Légende de la Sainte-Croix, by Piero della Francesca, made in 1926 and unknown until now, and portraits also dating from the artist's early years at the end of the 1920s. These discoveries are not merely instructive. They are the focus of the retrospective. Just as other expositions have done -- Paris in 1983, Lausanne in 1993, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2001 -- the interest given to Balthus's different periods has changed in a way that becomes explicit here. After the equal treatment to all of the work, from between the World Wars to the final years, is succeeding a predilection more and more marked for the 1930s and 40s, so that the large Passage du commerce Saint-André, particularly favored in Martigny, appears like a conclusion, after which Balthus invented and discovered less.

You can see a few images of the works in the exhibit here.

Washington Season Preview, 2008-2009

Jens Laurson, writing for WETA back in June, published a snapshot of What Not to Miss in the first half of the upcoming classical music season. Looking ahead at the entire 2008/09 season, here are the most striking concerts -- mark your calendars, and for many of them, start looking into buying your tickets sooner rather than later, to avoid seeing that SOLD OUT sign.

WASHINGTON PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY
The familiar roster of star pianists return to Washington this season, and no one who loves the piano will want to miss András Schiff playing part of his Beethoven cycle (October 10), Maurizio Pollini (October 29), Evgeny Kissin playing lots of Chopin (March 1), or Krystian Zimerman returning to the U.S. after the exit of the Bush administration (April 8). Perhaps less high on the star wattage charts but well worth a listen, too, are Yevgeny Sudbin (January 24), Simone Dinnerstein (February 7), Olga Kern (March 22), Richard Goode (March 29), and Louis Lortie playing the complete Chopin etudes (May 2).

Other noteworthy recitals on the WPAS schedule come from violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Camerata Salzburg (October 11), violinist Vadim Repin and pianist Nikolai Lugansky (November 15), the Capuçon brothers with Nicolas Angelich (November 21), cellist Daniel Müller-Schott with pianist Angela Hewitt (December 15), and Frederica von Stade and Samuel Ramey (March 25).

As for visiting orchestras, put us down for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with Vladimir Jurowski and Leon Fleisher (February 26), the London Symphony Orchestra with Valery Gergiev and Alexei Volodin (!) (March 28), and Gustavo Dudamel conducting The Rite of Spring with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela (April 6).

Terezín | Theresienstadt, A. S. von Otter, B. Forsberg, D. Hope (released March 25, 2008) Deutsche Grammophon 477 6546

VOCAL ARTS SOCIETY
The main events of the VAS season are the recital by Anne Sofie von Otter, Daniel Hope, and Bengt Forsberg (April 30), with music from their devastating Terezín CD, followed closely by Magdalena Kožená (May 6). Additional recitals worth noting are the New York Festival of Song recital, led by Steven Blier, with two excellent young singers, mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey and tenor Joseph Kaiser (November 14), soprano Susanna Phillips (March 26), the return of Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson (April 17), and Teddy Tahu Rhodes (May 12).

VARIA
Full schedules are still being completed, but at the time of this writing, there are a few significant events at the Kennedy Center, including the second half of the Shostakovich cycle by the Emerson Quartet (November 5 and 6). Also, Opera Lafayette will give the modern premiere of Monsigny's Le Deserteur (January 29), and the Hilliard Ensemble returns to Washington (February 12). The Music Center at Strathmore will host the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with violinist Julia Fischer (February 24). Dumbarton Oaks will bring one of the nation's actual premier early music ensembles, the Boston Camerata, to its gorgeous Music Room (December 7 and 8).

There is contemporary music on the schedule at the Clarice Smith Center in College Park: the Kronos Quartet will perform Crumb's Black Angels (October 30), the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra will give a concert of modern Estonian music (November 9), and those crazy New York radicals will give one of their Bang on a Can Marathons, with Terry Riley (March 29, 3-9 pm). Also, cellist Steven Isserlis will play a recital (March 13).

Standing out from the many standard and frankly boring choral masterpieces being performed this season, Cathedral Choral Society will perform Hindemith's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (March 8) and City Choir of Washington will perform Handel's Israel in Egypt (November 22) and a welcome Lord Nelson Mass by Haydn (April 19).

NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The NSO begins its first rudderless season after the departure of Leonard Slatkin. There will be some fine programs from Principal Conductor Iván Fischer, and some interesting guest soloists, but more than a few hodge-podge programs that one could easily skip. Among the more interesting soloists are pianist Hélène Grimaud playing Beethoven's 4th piano concerto (October 2 to 4), cellist Steven Isserlis (October 23 to 25), pianist Yundi Li (January 22 to 24), violinist Leila Josefowicz playing a new concerto by Oliver Knussen (May 7 to 9), and soprano Karita Mattila (June 25 to 27).

Mark as particularly worthy the joint appearance of Leif Ove Andsnes and Ivan Volkov (January 15 to 17). Yes, Andsnes will play the Rachmaninov 3rd piano concerto, but Volkov will also conduct rarely heard works by Stravinsky and Crumb. Andre Previn and Anne-Sophie Mutter will give a joint concert (January 31), Charles Dutoit and pianist Yuja Wang will team up on the Prokofiev 2nd piano concerto and Stravinsky's Firebird (February 19 to 21), David Zinman will take the podium -- we could only wish permanently -- for some Brahms, Webern, and Schoenberg (April 23 to 25), and Helmuth Rilling will lead a performance of Haydn's Creation (April 30 to May 2).

BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The BSO's first season under Marin Alsop was an inspiring success, although it was due just as much to some exciting guest conductors as to Alsop. By comparison, her second season looks stale and oddly conventional, but at least the musicians' union has agreed to a new three-year contract, so the ensemble's future is secure for the moment. After the highly anticipated performances of Leonard Bernstein's psychedelic Mass (at the Meyerhoff, October 16 to 18, and the Kennedy Center on October 26), we look forward to the return of Yuri Temirkanov with Vadim Repin (March 26 to 29), a performance of Mahler's 6th symphony with Sasha Cooke (April 3 to 5), Nelson Freire playing the Beethoven 4th piano concerto, to compare with Hélène Grimaud (May 1 to 3), and Hilary Hahn premiering Jennifer Higdon's new violin concerto (June 4 to 7).

CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART
What about the smaller venues? The Corcoran's ticket prices can be steep, but their hall offers one of the best acoustics in the city. We look forward to a recital by pioneering pianist Benoît Delbecq (September 17), as well as chamber music concerts by Ionarts favorites, the Takács Quartet (November 9), the Auryn Quartet (February 8), and the Jupiter Quartet with violist Roger Tapping and cellist Natasha Brofsky (May 3).

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Speaking of fine acoustics, the free concert series at the LoC is focused largely on contemporary music this season: pianist Christopher Taylor will play a Messiaen Centennial Concert (October 25), the Takács Quartet will partner with Muzsikás (November 14), there will be tributes to Charles Wuorinen (December 5) and Elliott Carter (December 11 and 12). Most importantly, György and Márta Kurtág will collaborate with the Keller String Quartet in a Hommage à Bartók (February 7). Of course, there will be some good string quartets, including the Belcea Quartet (March 5) and Quatuor Mosaïques (April 18). Continuing a disappointing trend from last season, there is only one major historically informed performance ensemble this season, Collegium Vocale Gent with fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout (October 17).

Alexandre Tharaud, pianist

LA MAISON FRANÇAISE
For our Baroque music fix, the French Embassy will host Baroque violinist Patrick Bismuth and his ensemble La Tempesta (October 9), as well as Les Paladins led by Jérôme Correas (November 12). Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras will perform with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia (October 28), and as promised by Roland Celette, pianist Alexandre Tharaud will finally give a recital (October 24). Also, Paavali Jumppanen will ring in the Messiaen Year with a rendition of Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus (December 16).

EMBASSY SERIES
The list of pianists to hear is made longer at the city's embassies, with Till Fellner appearing at the Austrian Embassy (March 4 -- also reportedly at the National Gallery of Art on December 7), Benjamin Moser at the German Embassy (April 17), and Christopher Hinterhuber celebrating Haydn's 200th birthday at the Austrian Embassy (May 15). Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke will also give a recital at the Austrian Embassy (May 4).

SHRIVER HALL
The truly devoted listener thinks nothing of the drive to Baltimore, especially for the excellent series at Johns Hopkins' Shriver Hall. Several pianists will join forces for Leon Fleisher 80th Birthday Celebration (October 5). Other noteworthy performances include contralto Ewa Podleś (October 19), harpischordist Richard Egarr playing the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier in a free concert at the Baltimore Museum of Art (November 5), pianists Ingrid Fliter (January 18) and Radu Lupu (February 18), tenor Ian Bostridge (April 5), and flutist Emmanuel Pahud with harpischordist Trevor Pinnock (May 3).

Renée Fleming, National Symphony Orchestra Season Opening Ball Concert, September 16, 2007, photo by Scott Suchman

OPERA
Most worthy of notice from Washington National Opera this season is Renée Fleming making her company debut singing Lucrezia Borgia (November 1 to 17), as well as the Santa Fe Opera production of Peter Grimes with Patricia Racette (March 21 to April 4), and the next installment of Francesca Zambello's American Ring cycle, Siegfried (May 2 to 17).

Happily, the little opera companies in the area will offer some more exciting fare outside of Mozart-to-Puccini war horse territory. Baltimore's Opera Vivente will mount a production of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea (March 6 to 14), and the feisty American Opera Theater will present Philip Glass's Hydrogen Jukebox (January 2009). Peabody Chamber Opera will perform one of my favorites, Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen (November 20 to 23), as well as the premiere of Melissa Shiflett's opera on the story of Freud's patient Dora (April 23 to 26). Not to be outdone, Maryland Opera Studio will present another of my favorites, Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream (November 20 to 24), and Handel's Xerxes (April 18 to 26). Tickets to any of these much more interesting operas will cost far less than most seats at Washington National Opera.

NOT MENTIONED (partial list):

• Dumbarton Concerts
  
• National Gallery of Art [FREE]
  
• Phillips Collection [FREE]
  
• National Academy of Sciences [FREE]
  
• Freer Gallery of Art [FREE]
  
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
  
• Austrian Cultural Forum
  
• Cantate Chamber Singers
  
• Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington
  
• Tuesday Noontime Concerts, Church of the Epiphany [FREE]
  
• Tuesday Evening Concert Series (Charlottesville, Va.)

UPDATE:
George Mason University Center for the Arts (Fairfax, Va.)

• Kirov Orchestra, with pianist Alexei Volodin (November 14, 8 pm)
  
• Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman, piano (November 23, 4 pm)
  
• Academy of Ancient Music, Brandenburg Concertos (March 22, 4 pm)
  
• National Philharmonic of Russia, with pianist Denis Matsuev (April 24, 8 pm)

Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington

• Jerusalem String Quartet (April 26, 7:30 pm)

In Brief: Adios, Santa Fe

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond. There is not much activity out there, it being summer and all, but a few people are still posting.

• Veteran orchestral musicians, who define the expression "set in their ways," generally hate everything about historically informed performance practice. Younger musicians, many of whom have grown up playing in both HIP and traditional ensembles, tend simply to incorporate its edicts into their bag of tricks. One senior violinist spouts off about the most hated HIP practice, the sparing use of vibrato. Say what you will about Roger Norrington, but he is making people think again about how they think music should sound, even Elgar's. [Jessica Duchen]


• Heh. With hat tip to Gert, a very funny new blog. ["Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks]


• Tyler Green's dreams for an exhibit on Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park Series come true. [Modern Art Notes]


• If you read the reviews of the Elliott Carter-a-Pooza at Tanglewood, you will want to watch the video, pointed out to us by Bruce Hodges. [Monotonous Forest]


• Should have mentioned this in a previous In Brief, but in case you missed it, our own Jens Laurson has some thoughts on recordings of Beethoven's 9th symphony. [WETA Blog]


• With hat tip to ArtsJournal, Pope Benedict XVI is quietly cleaning up the Catholic Church's (dilapidated, lapsed) musical house, beginning with his own papal choir. Before you think this is only about saving the heritage of historical Catholic music (which it certainly is), the new choir master, Fr. Pierre Paul, is also bucking Vatican tradition by introducing women to the Sistine Choir. [The Globe and Mail]

Hungarian Ring

Just before Adam Fischer took over the Budapest Opera in 2006, he mounted a performance of Wagner's Ring cycle at the city's new Művészetek Palotája (Palace of Arts, pictured), on the banks of the Danube at the city's edge. As someone who knew Bayreuth, he wanted to recreate something like the experience in Budapest, but without the infamous disadvantages. Fischer has now directed two Ring festivals there, in 2007 and 2008, and plans another in June 2009. Martine D. Mergeay wrote a review of this year's cycle (Nouveau Bayreuth à Budapest ?, June 27) for La Libre Belgique (my translation):

A formidable immersion, musical, theatrical, and imaginative [...] and highly prized, too, judging by the size of the audience (everything was sold out) and its makeup: international -- groups of fans had come from the entire world -- and all generations, with a dress code to match, from shorts to tuxedo, and the price of seats ranging between 16 and 60 euros! With, at intermission, a gastronome's dinner at the restaurant or sandwiches and beer on the steps of the Palace, in the sun, facing the river. [...]

Many impressions stand out from these performances of the Ring, with many highs and a few lows. The Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, first of all, was in this music like a fish in water, bound in an organic way to its conductor, and taking risks with that are much greater than what is seen and heard here.

The singers in this year's performances included, notably, German soprano Evelyn Herlitzius, and most stunningly, German tenor Christian Franz; also Juha Uusitala, Walter Fink, Maati Salminen, and many others, as well as some promising young Hungarians. The house has about 1,200 seats. The singers wear concert dress but sing from memory and act, with no machinery or sets but effective lighting and projected images. I have always wanted to visit Budapest...

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Falstaff

For more background information on this opera, see my preview article on Falstaff.

It is possible that the perfect production of Verdi's Falstaff -- which plays in my head to the soundtrack of the classic recording with Tito Gobbi, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Anna Moffo -- has spoiled me by setting the bar too high. The new production at Santa Fe Opera is visually diverting, witty, and convincingly staged, but a few deficits in the casting and musical realization, as heard on Tuesday evening, were insurmountable in terms of its ultimate success. The 30-something Broadway and now opera director Kevin Newbury has kept the action in the late 16th century of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, framing his sets with half-timbered house walls and a proscenium frame bearing tiny models of Windsor cottages, which light up with a hearth-warming glow in the night. Newbury has described his production as focusing on the theme of childhood and claimed as a visual source of inspiration "Jan Steen’s paintings of lively domestic scenes."

Full cast in Act III, scene 2 ("Tutto nel mondo è burla")
of Falstaff, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)
So far, so good. For the comedy to work, we have to like the conniving gossips of Windsor and the way of life they want to preserve, which is why trying to cast the protagonists of the opera as amoral gangsters was so misguided in the Kirov Opera production. Newbury has his Falstaff appear like a ridiculous buffoon from the outset, showing the Garter Inn as a lopsided, ramshackle barn, with the trophies of Falstaff's long-gone knighthood scattered around the room -- the liveried saddle and shield cast aside, the lance thrust into the wall. The childhood theme is incarnated in the supernumerary role of Falstaff's page-boy, played by the impossibly cute and composed Trevor Wilson, who fetches drinks and steals purses for Falstaff. In the final scene, a row of children sit facing the ensemble to receive the opera's final lesson, "Tutto nel mondo è burla" (Everything in the world is a joke).

(L to R) Kelley O'Connor (Meg Page), Laura Giordano (Nannetta), Claire Rutter (Alice Ford), and Nancy Maultsby (Quickly) in Act I, scene 2 of Falstaff, costumes by Clare Mitchell, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

Taking over from French baritone Laurent Naouri, who had sung the title role from the opening through July 11, Anthony Michaels-Moore sang with a voice as broad of girth as the fat suit under his expansive costumes. In contrast to his officious Captain Balstrode in the Met's Peter Grimes earlier this year, he showed sure comic timing, exaggerating the fat knight's swagger and conceit in the Honor Aria, for example. Kelley O'Connor, the unforgettable Lorca in Ainadamar, was a comely Meg, while Claire Rutter was slightly shrewish vocally as Alice, although she had fairly sure control of the demanding passagework and (many) high notes. Nancy Maultsby had an almost masculine heft in the low-sitting part of Mistress Quickly, trading jabs with Michaels-Moore at every turn.

After a memorable turn as the Novice in Billy Budd, former Santa Fe apprentice singer Keith Jameson gave a rather funny, character tenor portrayal of Falstaff's lackey Bardolph, accompanied by the humorously tall Pistola of Wilbur Pauley, the Mutt to Jameson's Jeff. Former apprentice singer Franco Pomponi returned to Santa Fe as Ford, Alice's jealous husband, a role that is, in many ways, a parody of Verdi's jealous Otello. Pomponi did well to make Ford's sense of betrayal far over the top, singing with plenty of bluster and real anguish in the jealous aria.

Anthony Michaels-Moore (Falstaff) and Trevor Wilson (Robin, the page-boy) in Act III, scene 1 of Falstaff, costumes by Clare Mitchell, Santa Fe Opera, 2008 (photo © Ken Howard)

It was the sparkling love music of Nannetta and Fenton, which the librettist Boito said he wanted to be sprinkled throughout the opera, "like powdered sugar on a cake," that suffered most. Norman Reinhardt sang valiantly as Fenton, but unless the character's Act III aria "Dal labbro il canto estasiato vola" is superb, it is hard not to think that Boito was right to want to cut it. Laura Giordano's Nannetta was cute and graceful on stage, but with none of the shimmering, silvery radiance that the part needs, characterized instead by a small tone that was dark and vibrato-heavy. She was woefully underpowered in the fairy scene, which ultimately falls flat without her.

This opera was conductor Paolo Arrivabeni's American debut at the podium, and he did many things well, like the instrumental and choral parts of the fairy scene, which were transparent and leggiero, a lacewinged and elfen spectacle. At the same time, this score is one of Verdi's most complicated, and the many musical jokes in it need careful coordination to pull off. The final fugue was solid, but the juxtaposition of the male and female ensembles, where a duple versus triple effect reveals the opposition of the sexes in Windsor, was all over the place, more a chaotic jumble of rapid notes than a tableau centered around a consistent rhythmic pulse. This can be due to any number of reasons, including singers rushing ahead of one another, but a strong conductor can quickly right an ensemble train gone off the track.

Other Reviews: Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe Opera's 'Falstaff' lacks consistency (Dallas Morning News, July 31) Kyle MacMillan, Opera's "F's" deserve "A's" in Santa Fe's productions (Denver Post, July 5)

One note for a future production: the subtitles could be reworked to give the audience the chance to appreciate more of the linguistic jokes in the libretto. For example, the translation "like a star shining on darkest night" for the final line of Falstaff's letter misses yet another of the many fat jokes -- Falstaff is saying to both women, your face will shine on me like a star [shines] on the immensity [of night] (come una stella sull'immensità). The same is true of the faux-Latin invocations of the fairy scene: the wives' parts were translated, but not Falstaff's responses, Salvagli l'addomine (But save his belly), which makes a clever pun on "Salve me domine" (Save me, Lord). This is one last twinkle of Verdi's anticlerical eye, a mockery perhaps of the act of confession, a glutton's take on a pious litany.

Verdi's Falstaff will be repeated at Santa Fe Opera on August 4, 11, 16, 19, and 23.

Dusapin's New Opera

It is always a pleasure to spend some time at the Santa Fe Opera in the summer, but there are plenty of opera festivals in Europe we would love to be reviewing, too. Jens is going to have more from Munich, and here is one bit of news from the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, where Pascal Dusapin premiered his new opera, Passion, on June 29 in the restored Théâtre du Jeu de paume. The commission came from Stéphane Lissner, when he was director of the Aix Festival, with the instruction to "echo the operas of Claudio Monteverdi in orchestration or by revisiting their themes." Renaud Machart had a review (Pascal Dusapin livre son chef-d'oeuvre lyrique, July 3) in Le Monde (my translation):

Pascal Dusapin is the the most celebrated living French classical composer today, after his august elder Henri Dutilleux. In the past, his stage pieces were often marked by too many strings (ficelles), too much copy-and-paste (or cut-out/resew, if you rather), too many cosmetic effects, etc. Perelà, Uomo di fumo, premiered at the Opéra de Paris in 2003, strikes us as the worst example. So it is with that much more pleasure that one greets Passion, his new work, 90 minutes of music of extraordinary refinement, unreleased tension, density without filler. The paradox of this success is that, while making reference to known music and libretto texts, Pascal Dusapin gives the impression of never having been more fresh or spontaneous in invention.

Bell-like pinched strings, blazes of brass, echos of a choir of soloists with celestial or infernal voices, poetic electronic transformations, the continuum of the electric organ (the young Dusapin's instrument), the strangled voice of an oud with foreign intonation, the desolate isolation of the keyboard at the edge of the void, all of this seduces and, more than anything, overwhelms. And we love that the remarkable libretto (in Italian, by Dusapin himself) says nothing about what animates it dramatically -- nothing, that is, not more than a Beckett play, than Marguerite Duras's India Songs, or than Andrei Tarkovski's Stalker. Nothing, that is, everything about the mystery of the obscure passions that drive us.

What is it about wordless choruses these days? The French conductor Franck Ollu was at the podium, and Machart praises him and the soloists Barbara Hanigan and Georg Nigl. We await the recording or, even better, the DVD. See some pictures here, Mark Berry's review, Jorg van Uthmann's review, and Dusapin's interview in Le Figaro.