Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Figaro' Redux

(L to R) Keith Jameson (Basilio), Susanne Mentzer (Marcellina), Dale Travis (Bartolo), Daniel Okulitch (Count), Zachary Nelson (Figaro), Lisette Oropesa (Susanna), Susanna Phillips (Countess) in Le Nozze di Figaro, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)

The final opera of the season at Santa Fe Opera had to be Mozart, and it had to be the Mozart opera most produced here, Le Nozze di Figaro. Of course, it would be no surprise for me at this point to make some lament about chestnuts -- the most striking production of Mozart I ever witnessed here was Lucio Silla, inventively staged by Jonathan Kent in 2005 -- but I will not. The overwhelming feeling I had listening to Figaro for the umpteenth time -- and perhaps this was wrapped up in nostalgia for my final night in Crosby Theater this summer, on Saturday, watching the lightning strike the desert far away -- was just how lucky we were to be the recipients of such a towering work of art, by Mozart and Da Ponte at perhaps their most ingenious. As long as the staging and casting are decent, and they were very good here, the opera can work its ineluctable magic.

This was a revival of the 2008 production by Jonathan Kent, with sets and costumes by Paul Brown, which has been overseen this time by local director Bruce Donnell. The only singer returning from the 2008 cast was the Countess of soprano Susanna Phillips, who got the big ovations due to singers who sang here as apprentices, and she earned them. The voice has opened up beautifully in the last five years, and she more than filled the house while also keeping control over that suave pianissimo for the repeat of "Dove sono." Her understanding of the role of the Countess has also blossomed, and she seemed to inhabit the character in a more mature and profound way, investing "Porgi, amor" with sadness, through the musicality of each slowly turned phrase, and the recitative leading to "Dove sono" with the bitterness of a neglected wife.

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In Brief: Red or Green Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.) Now you know what to do with your Sunday.

• In case you missed the live streams of the Ring cycle from Bayreuth, you can listen to the performance of the first two operas, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, from France Musique -- audio only, so no need to worry about that dog of a production. [Das Rheingold | Die Walküre]


• One of the highlights of the Salzburg Festival (read the review by our own Jens Laurson): Manfred Honeck leads a performance of Jeanne d'Arc by Walter Braunfels, with Juliane Banse, Bryan Hymel, Pavol Breslik, and others with the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien. [ORF]


• Music of Beethoven and Wagner from the Aix-en-Provence Festival, with bass René Pape joining the Orchestre de Paris and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. [France Musique]


• From the MAfestivals 2013 in Bruges, René Jacobs conducts Handel's Orlando, with Bejun Mehta, Sophie Karthäuser, Sunhae Im, Kristina Hammarström, and others. [ORF]


• From the Proms, violinist Vadim Repin and conductor Donald Runnicles join the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for James MacMillan's Violin Concerto, plus music by Johann Strauss II and Beethoven. [Part 1 | Part 2]

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Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 5 ) Jeanne D'Arc • Walter Braunfels

Walter Braunfels • Jeanne D'Arc

The Would-Be Future of Opera at Stake

Jeanne d'Arc, signature

There is a special pleasure when an anticipated highlight turns into an experienced highlight. Walter Braunfels’ opera Jeanne D’Arc, Scenes from the Life of Saint Joan, one of the initial reasons not to miss this year’s Salzburg Festival (the other having been the hindsight-makes-you-smarter Gawain) was just such a pleasure. And indeed “pleasure” is the best-fitting description for the experience.

Happily a full Felsenreitschule greeted Jeanne D’Arc with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck. Honeck is one of the few and necessary Braunfels-champions ever since he discovered this opera for a performance with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich. He also went on to perform it with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm which yielded a splendid recording that Decca eventually, grudgingly, generously released.

From this recording we know just how beautiful an opera Jeanne D’Arc is. There were doubts if the ORF RSO—not an orchestra that specializes in the lush and melodious, whereas opera and conductor do—would pull it off. While the performance was noticeably different from the recording, no such qualms turned out necessary. The orchestra, the Salzburg Bach Chorus, and especially the singers put on a show that made for a wholly, soundly gratifying night out at the theater. Even possible, perfectly understandable carping about the lack of

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Notes from the 2013 Salzburg Festival ( 4 ) Salzburg Contemporary • Klangforum Wien 1

Salzburg Contemporary • Klangforum Wien 1 (Birtwistle)

"Trading Places" and Other Deadly Compositions

Click on excerpt for whole picture. All pictures courtesy Salzburg Festival, © Silvia Lelli

The Salzburg Festival may have done away with the “Kontinent” series that successfully focused on one contemporary composer every year, but under “Salzburg Contemporary” (the title in English, which is of course modern and terribly cosmopolitan!) the concept lives on, diluted. That’s most welcome, even if some of the enthusiasm and faith in the modern works seems missing, as does a bit of the audience for it.

It was certainly excellent to have the opportunity to follow up on the more-difficult-than-expected Gawain with two back-to-back Birtwistle concerts in the Kollegien Kirche, the gorgeous baroque University Church that J.B. Fischer von Erlach built and which is a more prominent presence in town than the tucked-away cathedral. The first night (early music arrangements and early music inspired works by Birtwistle) I missed, due to excellent Mahler. But the second night—which focused on Birtwistle’s seemingly favorite topic: death—I caught.

H.Birtwistle, Secret Theatre, 3 Settings of Celan, et al., P.Boulez / Ensemble InterContemporain C.Whittlesey DG

The impression was one of incertitude and hopeful, perhaps optimistic glimpses of recognition what Birtwistle might be all about. The performances of the modern music mavens of the Klangforum Wien under Sylvain Cambreling suggested that Birthwistle, despite his pronounced penchant for dark moods and shadowy impressions, is most easily comprehensible and digestible when lively.

Cortège (2007), as the title would suggest, might have funereal overtones, but it’s really a lively game of musical chairs during which each the ten mobile musicians (of 14), arranged in a semi-circle, get up to play a solo part in the middle, are ousted by the next instrument, sitting across from them, and move over to the other side. The spotlight-exchange is always a little different: the French horn, for example, which sounded gorgeously direction-less in the acoustic of the University Church, is very gently eased out of its solo by the courteous oboe. The bassoon on the other hand rather rudely snarls at the violin to let her know the time in the limelight is up. The clarinet only gets pushed out by the bass trumpet after vigorous resistance: All rather entertaining music, easy on the ears and filled with action. In the end the flute calls on each instrument to get a last little word in (which reminded me of a Stockhausen trick in SAMSTAG aus LICHT). Then it sighs for a repetitive last few bars before it dies away.

9 Settings of Celan for soprano, two clarinets, viola, cello, and double bass (1989-96), is a song cycle that moves from bittersweet, gentle darkness in “Thread Suns” and “White and Light” to increasingly agitated, torn, dissonant, and angular states with “Psalm” or the yearning “With Letter and Clock”, “One Eye, Open” and “Todtnauberg”. The latter uses the English translation (elsewhere used instead of the German) for spoken text and the German for the parts that are sung, which formed a dialogue for soprano Claron McFadden with herself. Her parts in these songs—continued with the commanding “Tenebrae”, the plain long-and-longer “Night”, and the concluding shimmering-crepuscular “Give the Word”—reinforced the impression, gained in Gawain, the Birtwistle instinctively treats female voices kinder than male voices. Appropriate for Celan, Birtwistle drains color from these songs, with ashen gray remaining, and a final, accusatory exclamation of the soloist.

Der stille Aussatz löst sich dir vom Gaumen
und fächelt Deiner Zunge Licht zu,
Licht

Tombeau, a Stravinsky remembrance of Birtwistle’s (1971), was easier listening. The music was played from the organ loft, at Birtwistle who quietly sat on stage to receive it. It has an entrancing pulse and seems to evoke older composers—well before Stravinsky, too—without quoting them… and then it’s over before it started. As a big fan of brevity (in the work of others, not my own), that was a clear winner. Although… Secret Theatre for chamber ensemble (1984) had a lot going for it, too. The groovy double bass brought by-now-unexpected liveliness to the concert, and the impression was something like that of a minor big band crashing into the Birtwistle concert in the Kollegienkirche, and spilling its members onto stage out of the back of a camper bus... only to then slowly adapt to the music that had been on offer so far. Eventually it becomes all very lively again, as the piece whips itself into a frenzy up to a point of exhaustion… and then ends in a repeated two note figure on the viola that tick-tocks away with a hidden message of “What the world needs now (is love, sweet love)”. Maybe he’s not such a dour cat, after all, that Birtwistle.

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Dip Your Ears, No. 149 (Hans Rott Returns)

H.Rott, Symphony in E, Suite for Orchestra in B-flat, P.Järvi / Frankfurt RSO RCA

Rott’s Return

Finally a label – RCA – has agreed to release the Frankfurt RSO and Paavo Järvi’s 2010 performance of Hans Rott’s grand Symphony. The story of composer and work (see Listen Winter 11) is as fascinating as the ebullient music. Paavo Järvi has channeled his enthusiasm for the youthful Wagnerian-Brucknerian-proto-Mahlerian symphony into a stupendous performance, still mindful of its weaknesses (tonal balance, triangle-excesses) to avoid these possible pitfalls. The fact that he couples the Symphony with a Hans Rott world premiere recording of the unfinished, re-constructed first Orchestral Suite makes this release only more exciting for lovers of over-the-top romantic orchestral works. Excerpt of Paavo Järvi talking about the Symphony here. Review of the concert at which this was (largely) recorded here.

Made possible by Listen Music Magazine.

Ionarts at Santa Fe: The Lady without a Lake

Joyce DiDonato (Elena) in La Donna del Lago, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera’s thrilling “Donna del Lago” proves the highlight of the summer
The Classical Review, August 2

It had to happen eventually, and it did.

After some disappointments earlier in the week, Thursday was a very good night to be at the Santa Fe Opera. The company’s debut production of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago turned out to be the high point of this summer’s season. In a charming, rustic production, directed by Paul Curran and shared with the Metropolitan Opera, a top-notch cast blew the roof off Crosby Theater with performances that were vocally and musically thrilling and dramatically compelling. The magnificent purple-hued vista of a stormy night in the New Mexico desert, complete with lightning flashes, is the sort of thing that only Santa Fe can offer.

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Rossini, La Donna del Lago (critical edition of the score edited by H. Colin Slim)
Libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, premiered 24 October 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples
Based on Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
Santa Fe Opera

SEE ALSO:
Scott Cantrell, Vocal virtuosity in Santa Fe “La donna del lago” (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

George Loomis, La donna del lago, Santa Fe, New Mexico – review (Financial Times, August 1)

James M. Keller, Joyce DiDonato dazzles in La donna del lago (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 14)

For Your Consideration: 'Europa Report'

Recent discoveries of unexpected forms of life able to survive at the bottom of the ocean, surviving off thermal vents rather than sunlight, have made the possibility of similar forms of life on other planets seem even more likely. Scientific speculation is focused on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter and known at least since the time of Galileo, where the smoothness of the ice observed on the surface by recent space probes has led scientists to believe that an ocean, possibly teeming with life, may lie under the surface. These are the scientific facts behind Europa Report, the new documentary-style space thriller by Sebastián Cordero. On a shoestring budget and with a well-written script by Philip Gelatt, the movie brings to life the story of six astronauts on a corporation-funded mission to land on Europa and deploy scientific equipment to gather any evidence of life.

Europa Report (directed by Sebastián Cordero)

The movie works in part because the characters are developed and their conflicts interesting, especially as they unfold shuffled out of chronological order by Gelatt's screenplay. As the scientists, Christian Camargo (Twilight Saga) and Karolina Wydra (House) are willing to take risks to their personal safety to find the evidence of life on Europa that they know is there. Anamaria Marinca is the talented and daring pilot who manages to salvage the mission, assisted by the Chinese astronaut played by Daniel Wu, and Michael Nyqvist is the veteran Russian astronaut whose jittery fears endanger his colleagues. Only the technician played by Sharlto Copley seems to have regrets about coming on the mission, as he makes videos for his young son back on Earth. Early in the film, it becomes clear that things had gone terribly wrong, as the director of the mission back on earth, played by Embeth Davidtz (Mad Men, Bridget Jones's Diary), explains that communications with the ship were lost as it neared Jupiter. The film is presented, in a style that recalls Blair Witch Project and other found-footage films but is much more refined and well-crafted than most of them, as a distillation of the footage from on-board cameras, which somehow was beamed back to Earth from the surface of Europa.

Other Reviews: New York Times | Washington Post | Space.com | NPR | io9 Washington City Paper | Los Angeles Times | Popular Science | Discovery.com

What Cordero and his crew were able to produce, with hardly any high-end effects, is nothing short of remarkable. This was made possible by a careful attention to detail, in the makeup of the spaceship and the clothes and equipment the astronauts wear, done in consultation with technical experts at NASA and other space exploration agencies. The shooting was done almost entirely in a sound stage, closed off and with a large number of cameras rolling simultaneously, to provide all the video footage that is spliced together. Although one wishes that money had come through to provide just one CGI blast at the end of the film, without which there is an inevitable sort of let-down, the production values are, as a result, very high and credible, even those that reproduce reduced-gravity conditions. Indeed, Europa Report offers a much more realistic view of space travel than most sci-fi thrillers, down to the claustrophobic horrors and dangers involved in space walks and landing. The number of science-related publications reviewing and praising the film are a sign of that fidelity. Indeed, the film's occasional longueurs, which could perhaps have been tightened in the screenplay, are a good reminder of the boredom and sameness the astronauts would have to face on this kind of long voyage.

This film opens today in Washington, at the E Street Cinema.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Oscar'

David Daniels (Oscar Wilde, center) and cast in Oscar, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Morrison’s “Oscar” premiere proves a trial at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 1

One of the best things about coming to the Santa Fe Opera each summer is the chance to hear new or at least recent operas. The company has a decorated history of world and U.S. premieres, an admirable devotion to contemporary composition to which it has stuck through thick and thin. This year’s season was anchored on the world premiere of Oscar, heard Wednesday night, the first opera by American composer Theodore Morrison and the result of a co-commision with Opera Philadelphia, which will mount it in 2015.

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Theodore Morrison, Oscar
With David Daniels, Heidi Stober, William Burden
Santa Fe Opera

SEE ALSO:
Ray Mark Rinaldi, First openly gay opera a fitting tribute to Oscar Wilde (Denver Post, July 15)

James M. Keller, 'Oscar' unveiled at Santa Fe Opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 28)

John Stege, Oscar’s Fatal Attraction: A messy night at the Opera (Santa Fe Reporter, July 30)

[Batty Masetto], Walk on the Wilde Side (Parterre.com, July 31)

Philip Campbell, Operatic Oscar (Albuquerque Journal, August 1)

James R. Oestreich, When a Poet’s Life and the Law Are at Odds (New York Times, August 2)

Scott Cantrell, A strong, if imperfect, new Oscar Wilde opera in Santa Fe (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

George Loomis, Oscar, Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico (Financial Times, August 4)