Each summer the Merola Opera Program invites 25 young singers, apprentice coaches, and apprentice stage directors for intense study to improve their craft. One of the first public events for the participants is to sing one or two arias for San Francisco Opera’s general director, David Gockley, sitting in row 14 of the orchestra. Each singer presents an aria of his or her choosing, accompanied on the piano by one of the apprentice coaches. After an intermission, approximately half of the singers are invited to sing an additional aria. Although the additional aria is introduced in the form “My name is Elizabeth Zharoff, and I will sing Sempre libre from La Traviata,” I am told that the additional aria is chosen by David Gockley from a list of several submitted by the singer. It’s very much like the Irene Dalis Vocal Competition, except that in the competition every singer sings one aria of his/her choice and then immediately a second aria selected by the judges, and intermission is taken after half the singers have sung. Since the Merola audition is a working audition, the audience was requested to withhold applause until the very end, after all the singing was over. No evaluations or conclusions were shared with the audience, although after each aria we heard a “Thank you” or “bravo;” I may have heard one “fabulous.”
I had a couple of favorites. Suzanne Rigden impressed me in the first half with her strong, clear tone in Olympia’s aria from The Tales of Hoffman, but she was not called back to sing again. Elizabeth Zharoff was called back, and that is when we heard her dynamic Sempre libre. A friend has spoken highly of bass Adam Lau, but he did not participate in the auditions. NR.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Merry Nibelungs, Shelton Theater, June 23 2011
Die lustigen Nibelungen is a one-act operetta written in 1904 by Oscar Straus as a send-up of Wagner’s mighty Der Ring des Nibelungen, though it is more Nibelungenlied than Götterdämmerung. A modern translation/adaptation, The Merry Nibelungs, is being given as part of San Francisco Opera’s Ring Festival. Since I had so much enjoyed seeing Das Barbecü (a light-hearted retelling of the Ring in a country-western style) in Seattle, I hoped that The Merry Nibelungs would be similarly entertaining. Not. The singing was undistinguished, the acting subpar, and the adaptation full of crude attempts at sexual and potty humor.
There was one redeeming feature. Die lustigen Nibelungen lasts only about an hour, so in order to make a more substantial evening, the producer introduced several interstitial scenes in which the character of Cosima Wagner, in period costume, recalls various events from her life. I presume that the text was taken from Cosima’s diary. It was not a reading from the diary, it was more like we had Cosima herself telling us (in accented English) about interesting events in her past. While not the most inspired acting I’ve ever seen, Esther Mulligan’s Cosima was head and shoulders above what should have been the main event. A delta, at best.
There was one redeeming feature. Die lustigen Nibelungen lasts only about an hour, so in order to make a more substantial evening, the producer introduced several interstitial scenes in which the character of Cosima Wagner, in period costume, recalls various events from her life. I presume that the text was taken from Cosima’s diary. It was not a reading from the diary, it was more like we had Cosima herself telling us (in accented English) about interesting events in her past. While not the most inspired acting I’ve ever seen, Esther Mulligan’s Cosima was head and shoulders above what should have been the main event. A delta, at best.
Madama Butterfly, Metropolitan Opera HD Encore, June 15 2011
I was delighted to learn that the Met would rebroadcast this beautiful production by Anthony Minghella. There is no little house on a hill overlooking Nagasaki; rather, shoji screens that slide back and forth, right to left, are sufficient to evoke the little house. In back, the stage is raked, but painted in strips of successively darker colors which suggest steps. Above the steps, there is open sky. But the production may be most notable for its use of the traditional Japanese technique of using people, clad all in black, with black veils, to assist in the performance. By convention, these black-clad figures are understood not to be present—in a similar fashion to the convention that an “aside” sung by one character on stage is not heard by the other characters, even if they are only 10 feet away. In particular, the production sidesteps the challenges of working with a very young child by using a puppet dressed in a sailor costume and handled by three people: one for the feet, one for a hand and the body, and one for a hand and the head. It doesn’t work for some people, but it does for me. The puppeteers were masters of their craft. Additionally, Butterfly’s additional servants (Suzuki is one of three) were small puppets, manipulated by other black-clad assistants. In the flower scene, when Butterfly and Suzuki need flowers to decorate the little house in preparation for Pinkerton’s arrival, the flowers arrive on the backs of more black-clad assistants, who prostrate themselves on stage, and the principals can then pick up the flowers.
The most beautiful scenic effects accompany the beautiful love duet of the end of Act 1. The stage is darkened (after all, night has fallen), and 10-12 spherical paper lanterns are carried about by the black-clad assistants, now almost perfectly invisible in the darkness. Later a curtain of strings , each string bearing a number of golden paper squares, is lowered, and Butterfly and Pinkerton drift among them, while a flight of origami birds at the end of bamboo poles adds a special touch. Truly beautiful.
Our cast:
Butterfly: Patricia Racette
Pinkerton: Marcello Giordani
Sharpless: Dwayne Croft
Suzuki: Maria Zifchak
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Anthony Minghella
Patricia Racette’s Butterfly was excellent, though she didn’t quite carry the impact that I experienced in her San Francisco performance of 2007, which is one of my “top ten.” The other principals brought their considerable talents to the performance as well. An alpha-minus.
The most beautiful scenic effects accompany the beautiful love duet of the end of Act 1. The stage is darkened (after all, night has fallen), and 10-12 spherical paper lanterns are carried about by the black-clad assistants, now almost perfectly invisible in the darkness. Later a curtain of strings , each string bearing a number of golden paper squares, is lowered, and Butterfly and Pinkerton drift among them, while a flight of origami birds at the end of bamboo poles adds a special touch. Truly beautiful.
Our cast:
Butterfly: Patricia Racette
Pinkerton: Marcello Giordani
Sharpless: Dwayne Croft
Suzuki: Maria Zifchak
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Anthony Minghella
Patricia Racette’s Butterfly was excellent, though she didn’t quite carry the impact that I experienced in her San Francisco performance of 2007, which is one of my “top ten.” The other principals brought their considerable talents to the performance as well. An alpha-minus.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera HD, June 1 2011
We had to miss the regular May 14 broadcast of Die Walküre because we were at Spannochia, near Siena, in Tuscany. But we were back in time to catch the encore broadcast. This being the Robert Lepage production, the stage was dominated by the 45-ton “machine,” the one with the 24 rotating planks. Here, the machine was put to the best use yet: during the prelude, Siegmund runs through the trees, represented well enough by planks held vertically or almost vertically so that Siegmund can run in front of some and in back of others. Images of tree trunks were projected on the planks. You wouldn’t confuse them with Seattle’s trees, but it worked. As Siegmund enters the hut (“Ein Quel! Ein Quel!”) all planks but one rotate to form the ceiling of the hut, and a lightly varnished wood color is projected on them. The one that remains vertical is, of course, the ash tree, and there is a sword sticking out of it—a convenient place for Hunding to hang his coat when he arrives. During the episodes in which Siegmund tells his history, some silhouetted figures representing the action (mainly, running one way or the other, or stabbing another figure) are projected. And they ran quickly—very distracting.
In Act 2, there was a stage prop that I had not seen before. The stage directions call for Fricka to arrive in a chariot drawn by two rams. Here, Fricka is seated in a large chair; the front of the armrests are carved in the shape of rams. Since Fricka dominates Wotan in this scene, she and her chair are placed on the planks, above Wotan, who is at stage level. For the second part of Act 2, we are back to the planks-as-trees theme.
The Ride of the Valkyries opens with the Valkyries riding bucking planks (rotating first one way, then the other), and holding reins that are connected to the fronts of the planks. Later the planks serve as a surface on which to project abstract images. When Wotan puts Brünnhilde to sleep, a double is suspended head down from a central, vertical plank.
Our cast:
Siegmund: Jonas Kaufmann
Sieglinde: Eva-Maria Westbroek
Hunding: Hans-Peter König
Wotan: Bryn Terfel
Brünnhilde: Deborah Voigt
Fricka: Stephanie Blythe
Conductor: James Levine
Production: Robert Lepage
The performances were uniformly excellent, but I was particularly struck by:
In Act 2, there was a stage prop that I had not seen before. The stage directions call for Fricka to arrive in a chariot drawn by two rams. Here, Fricka is seated in a large chair; the front of the armrests are carved in the shape of rams. Since Fricka dominates Wotan in this scene, she and her chair are placed on the planks, above Wotan, who is at stage level. For the second part of Act 2, we are back to the planks-as-trees theme.
The Ride of the Valkyries opens with the Valkyries riding bucking planks (rotating first one way, then the other), and holding reins that are connected to the fronts of the planks. Later the planks serve as a surface on which to project abstract images. When Wotan puts Brünnhilde to sleep, a double is suspended head down from a central, vertical plank.
Our cast:
Siegmund: Jonas Kaufmann
Sieglinde: Eva-Maria Westbroek
Hunding: Hans-Peter König
Wotan: Bryn Terfel
Brünnhilde: Deborah Voigt
Fricka: Stephanie Blythe
Conductor: James Levine
Production: Robert Lepage
The performances were uniformly excellent, but I was particularly struck by:
- Jonas Kaufmann’s cries of “Wälse! Wälse!” This is what it means to be a heldentenor.
- Hans-Peter König’s superb tone as Hunding, although he had the appearance of a kindly grandfather.
- Deborah Voigt’s anguished, dejected entrance for the Annunciation of Death scene. Just in her acting, it was obvious that she was about to do something she really did not want to do.
- Bryn Terfel’s towering rage at the Valkyries in Act 3 Scene 2. Never before have I seen a Wotan so beside himself with anger.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
La Boheme, Opera San Jose, April 30 2011
Il Trovatore in the morning, La Boheme in the evening—life is so rich! Where to go from here, except to see the same opera morning and evening?
This La Boheme had the same sets reviewed earlier; the difference was the singers. Opera San Jose presents eight performances of each opera, with four performances by each of two casts, and we arrange to see both casts. This evening we saw:
Marcello: Krassen Karagiozov
Rodolfo: Christopher Bengochea
Colline: Silas Elash
Schaunard: Daniel Cilli
Benoit: Paul Murray
Mimi: Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste
Musetta: Jillian Boye
Alcindoro: Stephen Boisvert
Parpignol: Lee Steward
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Director: Timothy Near
The standout this time was Silas Elash. I’m a sucker for the beautiful bass tones that he produced in “Vecchia zimarra,” otherwise known as the overcoat aria. I was wondering how they were going to make him up, make a person of his age appear to fit with the other Bohemians, but they did very well. They gave him a mass of shoulder-length, wavy red hair, and a big bushy red beard to match—it was hard to find the “mature” gentleman underneath.
But again, just like Thursday night, I did not manage to get emotionally involved with Mimi, and the eyes barely moistened. A bit better than a gamma.
This La Boheme had the same sets reviewed earlier; the difference was the singers. Opera San Jose presents eight performances of each opera, with four performances by each of two casts, and we arrange to see both casts. This evening we saw:
Marcello: Krassen Karagiozov
Rodolfo: Christopher Bengochea
Colline: Silas Elash
Schaunard: Daniel Cilli
Benoit: Paul Murray
Mimi: Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste
Musetta: Jillian Boye
Alcindoro: Stephen Boisvert
Parpignol: Lee Steward
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Director: Timothy Near
The standout this time was Silas Elash. I’m a sucker for the beautiful bass tones that he produced in “Vecchia zimarra,” otherwise known as the overcoat aria. I was wondering how they were going to make him up, make a person of his age appear to fit with the other Bohemians, but they did very well. They gave him a mass of shoulder-length, wavy red hair, and a big bushy red beard to match—it was hard to find the “mature” gentleman underneath.
But again, just like Thursday night, I did not manage to get emotionally involved with Mimi, and the eyes barely moistened. A bit better than a gamma.
Il Trovatore, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, April 30 2011
According to Enrico Caruso, and repeated by hostess Renee Fleming, all you need to do to put on Il Trovatore is to hire the four best singers in the world. “Best” is a matter of opinion, but the Met lavished star power on this production:
Manrico: Marcelo Alvarez
Leonora: Sandra Radvanovsky
Count di Luna: Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Azucena: Dolora Zajick
All were superb, but I have to give top billing to Dmitri Hovorostovsky, whom I found especially effective. Stefan Kocan’s Ferrando wasn’t too shabby either.
The set was familiar; we had seen it in the San Francisco opera house and at the ballpark in 2009. It turns out that it is a joint production of San Francisco, the Met, and Chicago Lyric. It features a rotating stage, the better to preserve momentum by not ringing down the curtain for a scene change. The circle is divided into three 120° sections by tall concrete (or “concrete”) walls. The first scene features a long concrete staircase proceeding high up the right-hand wall. The Anvil Chorus scene and the final prison scene have something that looks like a rocky shell overhanging what looks like the entrance to a cave; in the prison scene there is a thick, charred pole with manacles, clearly echoing the backstory of Azucena’s mother being burned at the stake. The scenes for the convent and Leonora outside the prison use the third section of the rotating stage, with large steel grates separating one side from another—like a portcullis, except that they don’t move.
Rodvanovsky and Hvorostovsky also performed in San Francisco in 2009, and that production was the highlight of the season. The Met’s production was certainly strong, but did not quite reach the intensity of San Francisco’s. Perhaps the difference can be attributed to the conducting: San Francisco’s superb Verdi/Puccini conductor, Nicola Luisotti, as compared to the Met’s Marco Armiliato.
A very strong performance; a very solid beta.
Manrico: Marcelo Alvarez
Leonora: Sandra Radvanovsky
Count di Luna: Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Azucena: Dolora Zajick
All were superb, but I have to give top billing to Dmitri Hovorostovsky, whom I found especially effective. Stefan Kocan’s Ferrando wasn’t too shabby either.
The set was familiar; we had seen it in the San Francisco opera house and at the ballpark in 2009. It turns out that it is a joint production of San Francisco, the Met, and Chicago Lyric. It features a rotating stage, the better to preserve momentum by not ringing down the curtain for a scene change. The circle is divided into three 120° sections by tall concrete (or “concrete”) walls. The first scene features a long concrete staircase proceeding high up the right-hand wall. The Anvil Chorus scene and the final prison scene have something that looks like a rocky shell overhanging what looks like the entrance to a cave; in the prison scene there is a thick, charred pole with manacles, clearly echoing the backstory of Azucena’s mother being burned at the stake. The scenes for the convent and Leonora outside the prison use the third section of the rotating stage, with large steel grates separating one side from another—like a portcullis, except that they don’t move.
Rodvanovsky and Hvorostovsky also performed in San Francisco in 2009, and that production was the highlight of the season. The Met’s production was certainly strong, but did not quite reach the intensity of San Francisco’s. Perhaps the difference can be attributed to the conducting: San Francisco’s superb Verdi/Puccini conductor, Nicola Luisotti, as compared to the Met’s Marco Armiliato.
A very strong performance; a very solid beta.
La Boheme, Opera San Jose, May 28 2011
After having given three previews on La Boheme, which involved deeper study than I have previously given the opera, I was ready for an emotionally draining experience in the opera house. (I even had to cut out pieces from the talks I gave, figuring that it wasn’t good form for the speaker to lose his composure, especially over a fictional character.) Instead, I got one of those rare experiences: a dry-eyed La Boheme. Nothing particularly went wrong, but very little went right either.
The sets were, of course, traditional. The Bohemians are clearly living at the top of the building, with gigantic wooden beams and their supports running across the top of their garret. There is an easy chair and a stove. There is no table, but there is a copper bathtub, with wheels artfully concealed beneath it. When the Bohemians need a table, they wheel the tub out to center stage; Colline gets in the tub and a plank is laid across the tub, above his feet, and the comestibles are served on top of it. The largest object on stage is an artist’s scaffold, a large wooden structure with steps on one side and vertical on the other, the sort of thing that Cavaradossi might pull up next to the painting of the Madonna that he is working on, but rather out of place in the Bohemian’s garret, even though Marcello is working on a large (at least 6 feet on a side) painting of “The Crossing of the Red Sea.” Marcello’s painting technique is most unusual—the term “slapdash” comes to mind. He is taking broad swipes at what looks like a finished painting; he looks more like he is dusting the painting than creating it. And how he is going to get that monster out the door and down the stairs is something that he will leave to the stagehands to figure out. In the front right corner of the stage (from the audience’s viewpoint) is a small structure enclosing a large window that can be opened to permit Rodolfo (and later, Colline) to step out onto a small balcony.
The Act 2 set garnered applause as the curtain went up. It’s a small Parisian plaza, with the Cafe Momus to the left, a charcuterie (think butcher shop) behind the Cafe, and to the right a brasserie and another shop. On the backdrop are convincingly painted the buildings in the background, and there is a broad alley in the center for the entrances of Parpignol and Musetta. Of course, there are lots of people milling about.
Act 3, at the gates of Paris, has a large steel fence in the center, with the customs official’s shack immediately to the right and Marcello and Musetta’s inn on the left; the inn has an external brick staircase to the second floor. Sad to day, the brick staircase was not all that stable, and wobbled noticeably when Rodolfo or Marcello used it. There is no evidence of the repurposed “Crossing of the Red Sea.” Act 4 is back in the garret, looking just like Act 1, except that the copper tub has been pushed to one side to make way for a bed.
Our cast:
Marcello: Torlef Borsting
Rodolfo: Alexander Boyer
Colline: Isaiah Musik-Ayala
Schaunard: Daniel Cilli
Benoit: Paul Murray
Mimi: Jasmina Halimic
Musetta: Sandra (Rubalcava) Bengochea
Alcindoro: Stephen Boisvert
Parpignol: Lee Steward
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Director: Timothy Near
It was a pleasure to hear Sandra Bengochea again. She continues to sing beautifully, and brought all of the spunk that Musetta needs—perhaps too much. When she complains about her foot hurting, places her foot on a chair, and hikes up her skirts, she hikes them way up, so much so that Alcindoro feels compelled to place his top hat in a certain place. I presume that was a directorial decision, and just one of several misfires:
On the whole, competently performed, but not much more. A gamma, or a bit better.
The sets were, of course, traditional. The Bohemians are clearly living at the top of the building, with gigantic wooden beams and their supports running across the top of their garret. There is an easy chair and a stove. There is no table, but there is a copper bathtub, with wheels artfully concealed beneath it. When the Bohemians need a table, they wheel the tub out to center stage; Colline gets in the tub and a plank is laid across the tub, above his feet, and the comestibles are served on top of it. The largest object on stage is an artist’s scaffold, a large wooden structure with steps on one side and vertical on the other, the sort of thing that Cavaradossi might pull up next to the painting of the Madonna that he is working on, but rather out of place in the Bohemian’s garret, even though Marcello is working on a large (at least 6 feet on a side) painting of “The Crossing of the Red Sea.” Marcello’s painting technique is most unusual—the term “slapdash” comes to mind. He is taking broad swipes at what looks like a finished painting; he looks more like he is dusting the painting than creating it. And how he is going to get that monster out the door and down the stairs is something that he will leave to the stagehands to figure out. In the front right corner of the stage (from the audience’s viewpoint) is a small structure enclosing a large window that can be opened to permit Rodolfo (and later, Colline) to step out onto a small balcony.
The Act 2 set garnered applause as the curtain went up. It’s a small Parisian plaza, with the Cafe Momus to the left, a charcuterie (think butcher shop) behind the Cafe, and to the right a brasserie and another shop. On the backdrop are convincingly painted the buildings in the background, and there is a broad alley in the center for the entrances of Parpignol and Musetta. Of course, there are lots of people milling about.
Act 3, at the gates of Paris, has a large steel fence in the center, with the customs official’s shack immediately to the right and Marcello and Musetta’s inn on the left; the inn has an external brick staircase to the second floor. Sad to day, the brick staircase was not all that stable, and wobbled noticeably when Rodolfo or Marcello used it. There is no evidence of the repurposed “Crossing of the Red Sea.” Act 4 is back in the garret, looking just like Act 1, except that the copper tub has been pushed to one side to make way for a bed.
Our cast:
Marcello: Torlef Borsting
Rodolfo: Alexander Boyer
Colline: Isaiah Musik-Ayala
Schaunard: Daniel Cilli
Benoit: Paul Murray
Mimi: Jasmina Halimic
Musetta: Sandra (Rubalcava) Bengochea
Alcindoro: Stephen Boisvert
Parpignol: Lee Steward
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Director: Timothy Near
It was a pleasure to hear Sandra Bengochea again. She continues to sing beautifully, and brought all of the spunk that Musetta needs—perhaps too much. When she complains about her foot hurting, places her foot on a chair, and hikes up her skirts, she hikes them way up, so much so that Alcindoro feels compelled to place his top hat in a certain place. I presume that was a directorial decision, and just one of several misfires:
- Rodolfo leaves the door to the garret open as he escorts Mimi to the Cafe Momus.
- Mimi begins her Waltz sitting on a “throne” made by placing a chair on a table, with four young men very close by gazing at her unrealistically.
- The maid whom Mimi asks to go fetch Marcello has just emptied two chamberpots into a large barrel in the middle of the plaza.
- As Act 4 opens, Marcello is painting a smaller picture, but he’s holding it in one hand (no other support) while dabbing at it with the other.
- Colline sings “Vecchia zimarra” from the small balcony.
On the whole, competently performed, but not much more. A gamma, or a bit better.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)