The theater was not quite as full as I had expected. I allowed plenty of time to get my favorite seat, but excellent seats were still available an hour before start time. A number of “regulars” were not there. Was something else going on?
The production looked familiar, though I thought I had missed the previous presentation. Act I began “in the Scottish moors,” mounds of earth punctuated by trails and rocks, with trees silhouetted against the background. The camera focused on the left half of the stage, which became apparent only when the black curtain obscuring the right half of the stage was raised to reveal the fountain in which the body of a murdered woman still rests. In an interesting bit of direction, a “ghost,” portrayed by a super dressed in a white gown and with white makeup, appeared from behind a small mound and climbed into the fountain. Act II opened in Enrico’s very dimly lit study. Enrico had a magnificent desk with an elaborate parquet surface; the rest of the furniture was covered with dark gray drop cloths. As scene 1 turned into scene 2, a number of servants came in, removed the drop cloths, uncovered and raised the chandeliers, and revealed a room large enough to hold a wedding with many guests—it was the Met stage, after all. In a slightly anachronistic bit of staging, not to mention a considerable distraction during the famous sextet, the wedding photographer poses most of the principals for the “official” photograph. Our host for the broadcast, Renee Fleming, pointed out that the timing had been moved up to about 1835, which was about the time that the daguerreotype was invented. To the Met’s credit, Act III began with the frequently omitted Wolf’s Crag scene. Here the stage was basically dark. All we could see were the large easy chair on the left side of the stage and the lower steps of what turned into the grand staircase in the next scene. For scene 2, we got the full staircase that made a 180° turn, terminating in a balcony that ran high above the stage from one side to the other. The stage was completely reset, without pause, for scene 3, as the staircase and balcony were pulled away, a wall with a large arch was dropped from above, and a few graveyard monuments were added. During Edgardo’s death scene, Lucia herself appeared as a ghost.
Our cast:
Lucia: Natalie Dessay
Edgardo: Joseph Calleja
Enrico: Ludovic Tézier
Raimundo: Kwanchul Youn
Arturo: Matthew Plenk
Alisa: Theodara Hanslowe
Normanno: Philip Webb
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Mary Zimmerman
Ludovic Tézier was our first hint that we were in for something special. His Act I Cruda, funesta smania was sung with tremendous authority and malevolence. I would love to see him as Scarpia. Natalie Dessay’s Lucia was everything it ought to be. Kwanchul Youn's Raimundo was impressive, and his stage presence conveyed the gravitas of his role as chaplain. Arturo, the husband that Enrico has chosen for his sister Lucia, often comes across as fairly wimpy, but Matthew Plenk made him fairly respectable. Overall, a very fine performance, worth somewhere in the middle between beta and alpha.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Carmen in Spanish, Martinez Opera, March 12 2011
This performance might be better described as “Scenes from Carmen, in Spanish.” The production was advertised as the first ever of Carmen in Spanish, based on the inability to find a Spanish translation locally, or in the libraries of Paris, or in the libraries of Madrid. Lacking such a resource, Cesare Curzi made his own singing translation. To this listener, possessing the scantiest possible knowledge of both French and Spanish, the translation worked. I did catch the word “muerta” (death) rather than “mort” and a few other Spanish words, but primarily it was Bizet’s music that came across.
The production was a simple one, with eight singers, a children’s chorus, a piano, and two dancers. With no Zuniga, Morales, or chorus of cigarette-factory women, the first act comprised the children’s chorus, the Habanera, the Don Jose-Micaela duet, and the Seguidilla. The remaining acts were similarly cut. Between musical selections, Curzi summarized the action for us. There was no set, just five wooden chairs arrayed at the back of the stage, and a projection of a red rose on the back stage curtain. In contrast to some concert performances, where it is literally stand and sing, we did have acting. Carmen threw a flower at Don Jose; her hands were tied during the Seguidilla; Carmen, Frasquita, and Mercedes had tarot cards in act 3; in the finale Don Jose “knifed” Carmen with a thrust of his fist, although she remained clutched in Don Jose’s arms rather than falling to the ground.
Our cast:
Carmen: Cybele Gouverneur
Don José: Antonio Nagore
Escamillo: Adam Meza
Micaela: Ariel Pisturino
Frasquita: Aimee Puentes
Mercédès: Jennifer Panara
Remandado: Gustavo Hernandez
Dancairo: Sepp Hammer
Director/Translator/Narrator: Cesare Curzi
The production was modest, as were the results. Gouverneur, Puentes, and Panara were acceptable as the gypsy women. Nagore has a large voice, but he lacked subtlety and came close to cracking on several occasions. Meza displayed the same commanding stage presence that he did in his recent appearance in San Jose as Figaro in The Barber of Seville, but his voice could use more character. Hammer struggled with his part. The best singing was provided by Pisturino, whose third act Micaela aria continues to pop back into my head.
The most notable performance of the evening was contributed by one of the dancers. A man and a woman (unfortunately, I did not get their names) danced in Lilias Pastia’s tavern and during the entractes to act 3 and act 4. The man was a superb dancer, with total control over his motions. I know about as much about ballet as I do about French and Spanish, but I could certainly stand to see more dancing of that quality. Nevertheless, the entire performance rates no more than a gamma.
The production was a simple one, with eight singers, a children’s chorus, a piano, and two dancers. With no Zuniga, Morales, or chorus of cigarette-factory women, the first act comprised the children’s chorus, the Habanera, the Don Jose-Micaela duet, and the Seguidilla. The remaining acts were similarly cut. Between musical selections, Curzi summarized the action for us. There was no set, just five wooden chairs arrayed at the back of the stage, and a projection of a red rose on the back stage curtain. In contrast to some concert performances, where it is literally stand and sing, we did have acting. Carmen threw a flower at Don Jose; her hands were tied during the Seguidilla; Carmen, Frasquita, and Mercedes had tarot cards in act 3; in the finale Don Jose “knifed” Carmen with a thrust of his fist, although she remained clutched in Don Jose’s arms rather than falling to the ground.
Our cast:
Carmen: Cybele Gouverneur
Don José: Antonio Nagore
Escamillo: Adam Meza
Micaela: Ariel Pisturino
Frasquita: Aimee Puentes
Mercédès: Jennifer Panara
Remandado: Gustavo Hernandez
Dancairo: Sepp Hammer
Director/Translator/Narrator: Cesare Curzi
The production was modest, as were the results. Gouverneur, Puentes, and Panara were acceptable as the gypsy women. Nagore has a large voice, but he lacked subtlety and came close to cracking on several occasions. Meza displayed the same commanding stage presence that he did in his recent appearance in San Jose as Figaro in The Barber of Seville, but his voice could use more character. Hammer struggled with his part. The best singing was provided by Pisturino, whose third act Micaela aria continues to pop back into my head.
The most notable performance of the evening was contributed by one of the dancers. A man and a woman (unfortunately, I did not get their names) danced in Lilias Pastia’s tavern and during the entractes to act 3 and act 4. The man was a superb dancer, with total control over his motions. I know about as much about ballet as I do about French and Spanish, but I could certainly stand to see more dancing of that quality. Nevertheless, the entire performance rates no more than a gamma.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Nixon in China, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, March 2 2011
I had expected light attendance, what with this being an “encore” performance of a modern opera, but there must have been 50 people at our local theater. You brave opera lovers, you!
This was the first time that the Met had presented Nixon in China, even though the opera was premiered 24 years ago (at the Houston Grand Opera). To my mind, they need not have been in such a hurry. The music, by John Adams, was moderately interesting and never offensive. However, the libretto by Alice Goodman struck me as silly and pointless. Nixon arrives on Air Force One: well, that has some dramatic potential. Nixon meets the aged Mao in the latter’s study: yawn. The Americans and Chinese toast each other at a banquet: yawn. Pat Nixon visits a glass factory and a pig farm: yawn. The Red Detachment of Women as a ballet: ballets in the middle of an opera are a time-honored tradition. The characters reflect on what has/has not been accomplished during the visit: well, not much. Nobody dies. Nobody falls in love. Sort of like Hell as a place of unrelieved boredom.
The staging was by Peter Sellars, who among other avant-garde notions has set Cosi fan tutte in a Florida diner. The first act and the first half of the second act went reasonably well. The front half of Air Force One (with its large nose wheel) lands as a cardboard cutout descending from on high; Nixon walks down the stairway and greets his hosts. In Mao’s study, the characters stand or sit in easy chairs. Mao is hardly able to walk, and is assisted by a woman on each side of him. (An interesting anecdote from an intermission interview with Winston Lord, who was there in 1972: “We couldn’t tell whether Mao was being deeply philosophical or was just being senile.”)
Scene 3 featured three gigantic circular banquet tables. In Act 2, scene 1 is performed with much moving around of stage props to represent the glass factory, the pig farm (with a smallish plastic big), etc. Scene 2, with The Red Detachment of Women, is where things veer wildly off course. Henry Kissinger leaves his seat, gets up on stage (here, the right half of the Met stage), and molests one of the women performers. In Act 3 we see half a dozen simple beds with white sheets lined up from left to right, the feet of the beds facing us. After a segment with Mr. and Mrs. Nixon, Mao comes in, sits on the edge of his bed, and one of the women who supported him in the Mao’s study scene rubs his crotch for an extended period of time, with a perfectly blank look on her face. That’s when the picture in the theater went away. Five minutes later, the sound went away. Five minutes later, everyone (well, everyone who was left, after a certain amount of attrition at the intermissions) was getting a complimentary pass to a future movie. I have to hand it to the Pleasant Hill theater: when something goes wrong, they do their best to make up for it.
Our cast:
Richard Nixon: James Maddalena
Pat Nixon: Janis Kelly
Henry Kissinger: Richard Paul Fink
Mao Tse-Tung: Robert Brubaker
Chou En-lai: Russell Braun
Chiang Ch'ing: Kathleen Kim
Conductor: John Adams
Of these, Richard Paul Fink was the standout, with a hefty, authoritative baritone. But he couldn’t redeem the remainder of the production. A delta. Perhaps a different production, which we will see in San Francisco next year, will improve my attitude. I hope so.
This was the first time that the Met had presented Nixon in China, even though the opera was premiered 24 years ago (at the Houston Grand Opera). To my mind, they need not have been in such a hurry. The music, by John Adams, was moderately interesting and never offensive. However, the libretto by Alice Goodman struck me as silly and pointless. Nixon arrives on Air Force One: well, that has some dramatic potential. Nixon meets the aged Mao in the latter’s study: yawn. The Americans and Chinese toast each other at a banquet: yawn. Pat Nixon visits a glass factory and a pig farm: yawn. The Red Detachment of Women as a ballet: ballets in the middle of an opera are a time-honored tradition. The characters reflect on what has/has not been accomplished during the visit: well, not much. Nobody dies. Nobody falls in love. Sort of like Hell as a place of unrelieved boredom.
The staging was by Peter Sellars, who among other avant-garde notions has set Cosi fan tutte in a Florida diner. The first act and the first half of the second act went reasonably well. The front half of Air Force One (with its large nose wheel) lands as a cardboard cutout descending from on high; Nixon walks down the stairway and greets his hosts. In Mao’s study, the characters stand or sit in easy chairs. Mao is hardly able to walk, and is assisted by a woman on each side of him. (An interesting anecdote from an intermission interview with Winston Lord, who was there in 1972: “We couldn’t tell whether Mao was being deeply philosophical or was just being senile.”)
Scene 3 featured three gigantic circular banquet tables. In Act 2, scene 1 is performed with much moving around of stage props to represent the glass factory, the pig farm (with a smallish plastic big), etc. Scene 2, with The Red Detachment of Women, is where things veer wildly off course. Henry Kissinger leaves his seat, gets up on stage (here, the right half of the Met stage), and molests one of the women performers. In Act 3 we see half a dozen simple beds with white sheets lined up from left to right, the feet of the beds facing us. After a segment with Mr. and Mrs. Nixon, Mao comes in, sits on the edge of his bed, and one of the women who supported him in the Mao’s study scene rubs his crotch for an extended period of time, with a perfectly blank look on her face. That’s when the picture in the theater went away. Five minutes later, the sound went away. Five minutes later, everyone (well, everyone who was left, after a certain amount of attrition at the intermissions) was getting a complimentary pass to a future movie. I have to hand it to the Pleasant Hill theater: when something goes wrong, they do their best to make up for it.
Our cast:
Richard Nixon: James Maddalena
Pat Nixon: Janis Kelly
Henry Kissinger: Richard Paul Fink
Mao Tse-Tung: Robert Brubaker
Chou En-lai: Russell Braun
Chiang Ch'ing: Kathleen Kim
Conductor: John Adams
Of these, Richard Paul Fink was the standout, with a hefty, authoritative baritone. But he couldn’t redeem the remainder of the production. A delta. Perhaps a different production, which we will see in San Francisco next year, will improve my attitude. I hope so.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Iphigenie in Tauride, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Feb. 26 2011
A few years ago, Susan Graham sang Iphigenie in a San Francisco Opera production that contributed to my hypothesis that “everything Susan Graham touches turns to gold.” Yesterday she sang the role at the Met, with the extra added advantage of having Placido Domingo as her Orestes. Why is this opera not more popular? Perhaps it takes performers of the stature of Graham and Domingo, but the bottom line was that I and all my friends in attendance were very well pleased.
The four acts of the opera were presented with one intermission, a seamless transition between acts 1 and 2, and acts 3 and 4, and just one set. The main part of the set was a large room, dominated by the sacrificial altar to the right of center and to the right of the altar a very large statue of what I take to be Diana—it was not very well lit, and the camera didn’t spend much time with it. The walls were a dark red, punctuated with a number of sconces with burning flames. In the center of the back wall was a door, carved in high relief, through which all the characters entered and exited the chamber. On the other side of the left wall of the altar room was a smaller, very dark room that looked like a storeroom, with a pile of heavy wooden furniture at the back, but given the shackles attached to the wall, and the prisoners constrained by the shackles, it was a prison cell.
“Where are the arias?” asked my music-major friends attending, with me, our first performance of Die Walküre, oh so many years ago. The same question could apply to this 1781 opera. It was rather Wagnerian, in that the music served the drama rather than the “mistaken vanity of the singers” as Gluck wrote in his preface to his first “reform opera,” Alceste. The music simply flowed from character to character to chorus to character, lacking any set pieces such as Una voce poco fa or Largo al factotum. At one point Domingo had a lengthy part, which he performed wonderfully well, and which would have elicited thunderous applause from the audience if the music had paused—but it didn’t, and the drama simply continued.
The overall effect was rather unusual. The opera gives you no take-aways in the form of memorable tunes, no Una voce poco fas or even a Winterstürme; in that sense I compare it to Palestrina, in that it is music that is wonderful to listen to, at the end you’re very glad you’ve attended, but you can’t really remember any of it. Maybe you can, after enough hearings. Graham and Domingo sang masterfully, as did Paul Groves and Gordon Hawkins in the lesser roles of Pylades and Thoas respectively. This performance is edging toward alpha quality.
Now if I could only get my friends who enjoyed Iphigenie in Tauride so much to come to Wagner with an open mind ...
The four acts of the opera were presented with one intermission, a seamless transition between acts 1 and 2, and acts 3 and 4, and just one set. The main part of the set was a large room, dominated by the sacrificial altar to the right of center and to the right of the altar a very large statue of what I take to be Diana—it was not very well lit, and the camera didn’t spend much time with it. The walls were a dark red, punctuated with a number of sconces with burning flames. In the center of the back wall was a door, carved in high relief, through which all the characters entered and exited the chamber. On the other side of the left wall of the altar room was a smaller, very dark room that looked like a storeroom, with a pile of heavy wooden furniture at the back, but given the shackles attached to the wall, and the prisoners constrained by the shackles, it was a prison cell.
“Where are the arias?” asked my music-major friends attending, with me, our first performance of Die Walküre, oh so many years ago. The same question could apply to this 1781 opera. It was rather Wagnerian, in that the music served the drama rather than the “mistaken vanity of the singers” as Gluck wrote in his preface to his first “reform opera,” Alceste. The music simply flowed from character to character to chorus to character, lacking any set pieces such as Una voce poco fa or Largo al factotum. At one point Domingo had a lengthy part, which he performed wonderfully well, and which would have elicited thunderous applause from the audience if the music had paused—but it didn’t, and the drama simply continued.
The overall effect was rather unusual. The opera gives you no take-aways in the form of memorable tunes, no Una voce poco fas or even a Winterstürme; in that sense I compare it to Palestrina, in that it is music that is wonderful to listen to, at the end you’re very glad you’ve attended, but you can’t really remember any of it. Maybe you can, after enough hearings. Graham and Domingo sang masterfully, as did Paul Groves and Gordon Hawkins in the lesser roles of Pylades and Thoas respectively. This performance is edging toward alpha quality.
Now if I could only get my friends who enjoyed Iphigenie in Tauride so much to come to Wagner with an open mind ...
The Barber of Seville, Opera San Jose, Feb. 24 2011
We returned four days later to see the other cast:
Figaro: Adam Meza
Almaviva: Chester Pidduck
Rosina: Cathleen Candia
Dr. Bartolo: Torlef Borsting
Don Basilio: Paul Murray
Fiorello: Anders Froehlich
Berta: Kindra Scharich
Thanks to attending Larry Hancock’s pre-performance lecture, I learned that director Jose Maria Condemi comes from a Latin American tradition that enjoys using inside jokes; specifically, the carrots in the Act 1 finale are an oblique reference to The Rabbit of Seville, and the apple on Ambrogio’s head a more obvious reference to Rossini’s final opera, William Tell. During the Largo al factotum, a young man and woman pantomimed the essence of the plot of The Elixir of Love, with Figaro playing the role of Dr. Dulcamara by offering the potion/wine to the man.
Adam Meza cut a very fine figure as Figaro, with the commanding stage presence that the role demands. He sang well, but without the richness of tone that Karagiozov produced in the other cast. If we had a Figaro with Kragiozov’s voice and Meza’s acting, we’d really have something.
Paul Murray, who had really impressed me as Alidoro in La Cenerentola, was our Don Basilio. I continue to be impressed, and hope to hear more from him in the future.
Torlef Borsting is benefiting from the training that is part of being an Opera San Jose resident artist. His A un dottor della mia sorte exceeded my expectations.
Chester Pidduck’s Almaviva was disappointing. It’s not a large voice, and he had a certain amount of trouble negotiating the florid passages in Ecco ridente, though he was more effective in the second act. Cathleen Candia sang a satisfying Rosina. Ming Luke, new to the podium in my experience, led a performance that sparkled just a bit more than Bryan Nies’s. Overall, a beta.
Figaro: Adam Meza
Almaviva: Chester Pidduck
Rosina: Cathleen Candia
Dr. Bartolo: Torlef Borsting
Don Basilio: Paul Murray
Fiorello: Anders Froehlich
Berta: Kindra Scharich
Thanks to attending Larry Hancock’s pre-performance lecture, I learned that director Jose Maria Condemi comes from a Latin American tradition that enjoys using inside jokes; specifically, the carrots in the Act 1 finale are an oblique reference to The Rabbit of Seville, and the apple on Ambrogio’s head a more obvious reference to Rossini’s final opera, William Tell. During the Largo al factotum, a young man and woman pantomimed the essence of the plot of The Elixir of Love, with Figaro playing the role of Dr. Dulcamara by offering the potion/wine to the man.
Adam Meza cut a very fine figure as Figaro, with the commanding stage presence that the role demands. He sang well, but without the richness of tone that Karagiozov produced in the other cast. If we had a Figaro with Kragiozov’s voice and Meza’s acting, we’d really have something.
Paul Murray, who had really impressed me as Alidoro in La Cenerentola, was our Don Basilio. I continue to be impressed, and hope to hear more from him in the future.
Torlef Borsting is benefiting from the training that is part of being an Opera San Jose resident artist. His A un dottor della mia sorte exceeded my expectations.
Chester Pidduck’s Almaviva was disappointing. It’s not a large voice, and he had a certain amount of trouble negotiating the florid passages in Ecco ridente, though he was more effective in the second act. Cathleen Candia sang a satisfying Rosina. Ming Luke, new to the podium in my experience, led a performance that sparkled just a bit more than Bryan Nies’s. Overall, a beta.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Barber of Seville, Opera San Jose, Feb. 20 2011
It has been quite a while since I’ve seen a “This performance is sold out” sign in front of the box office at the California Theatre, but there it was on Sunday—congratulations!
After the sprightly overture (which Rossini had borrowed from his Aureliano and Palmiera and Elizabeth, Queen of England), the curtain went up on a traditional set showing us a street in Seville. In the center, a two-story building with a front door and a wall fountain below, a balcony above and to the right, and directly above the front door, a translucent window through which we could see characters approaching the balcony. On the street, to the left, flower bed and a lamp post, and to the left of that, another building with a front door, separated from Dr. Bartolo’s house by a tiny alley. To the right, an alleyway entrance flanked by two palm trees, and further to the right, the door to a smaller house.
At the end of the first scene, Figaro and Almaviva stepped to the front of the stage to launch the finale with La bottega? while the curtain came down to cover the rotating of the set to display the interior of the house, where the remainder of the action will take place. We see the other side of the front door, with two massive sliding bolts above and below the latch; much stage business was made of opening and closing these bolts. In front, an easy chair and a sofa and a small writing desk; doors to the left and right. The overall color scheme was ochre; the first floor had a wainscoting with red and black diamonds over the ochre.
Our cast:
Figaro: Krassen Karagiozov
Almaviva: Michael Dailey
Rosina: Betany Coffland
Dr. Bartolo: Silas Elash
Don Basilio: Isaiah Musik-Ayala
Fiorello: Anders Froehlich
Berta: Tori Grayum
The stand-out performer was Karagiozov, who sang Figaro with the authority and vocal heft that the role calls for, though he lacked the last bit of stage presence that a Joseph Wright would have brought. (Wright sang Don Giovanni a few years ago, and it was fun seeing him enjoying being the Don.) I'm not sure that Elash’s voice was shown off to its best effect as Dr. Bartolo; I would love to hear him in Don Basilio’s La calunnia.
Jose Maria Condemi’s staging baffled me. It wasn’t offensive (for that, I refer to the Macbeth in San Francisco a few years ago), but I just didn't get the points that were trying to be made. Figaro enters, blindfolded, with four women pawing at him, as though he is The Stud Of Seville. Whereas the text calls for Fiorello’s musicians to praise Almaviva for their generous payment, these musicians wave their coins under his nose and point their instruments at him as though he has underpaid them. Berta always had a pipe in her mouth. I like to anticipate what the director might do with the Act 1 finale, for which all sorts of clever stagings have been devised. Here, the soldiers sent to arrest the “drunken” Almaviva wind up rotating in place, while various carrots are swung overhead. Huh?
It seemed that the Act 2 finale was cut just a little bit to bring the curtain down a few seconds before 11:00, at which time overtime charges kick in.
Overall, the performance did not sparkle as much as it might have. For that, and the baffling staging, I will award a “beta,” but barely.
After the sprightly overture (which Rossini had borrowed from his Aureliano and Palmiera and Elizabeth, Queen of England), the curtain went up on a traditional set showing us a street in Seville. In the center, a two-story building with a front door and a wall fountain below, a balcony above and to the right, and directly above the front door, a translucent window through which we could see characters approaching the balcony. On the street, to the left, flower bed and a lamp post, and to the left of that, another building with a front door, separated from Dr. Bartolo’s house by a tiny alley. To the right, an alleyway entrance flanked by two palm trees, and further to the right, the door to a smaller house.
At the end of the first scene, Figaro and Almaviva stepped to the front of the stage to launch the finale with La bottega? while the curtain came down to cover the rotating of the set to display the interior of the house, where the remainder of the action will take place. We see the other side of the front door, with two massive sliding bolts above and below the latch; much stage business was made of opening and closing these bolts. In front, an easy chair and a sofa and a small writing desk; doors to the left and right. The overall color scheme was ochre; the first floor had a wainscoting with red and black diamonds over the ochre.
Our cast:
Figaro: Krassen Karagiozov
Almaviva: Michael Dailey
Rosina: Betany Coffland
Dr. Bartolo: Silas Elash
Don Basilio: Isaiah Musik-Ayala
Fiorello: Anders Froehlich
Berta: Tori Grayum
The stand-out performer was Karagiozov, who sang Figaro with the authority and vocal heft that the role calls for, though he lacked the last bit of stage presence that a Joseph Wright would have brought. (Wright sang Don Giovanni a few years ago, and it was fun seeing him enjoying being the Don.) I'm not sure that Elash’s voice was shown off to its best effect as Dr. Bartolo; I would love to hear him in Don Basilio’s La calunnia.
Jose Maria Condemi’s staging baffled me. It wasn’t offensive (for that, I refer to the Macbeth in San Francisco a few years ago), but I just didn't get the points that were trying to be made. Figaro enters, blindfolded, with four women pawing at him, as though he is The Stud Of Seville. Whereas the text calls for Fiorello’s musicians to praise Almaviva for their generous payment, these musicians wave their coins under his nose and point their instruments at him as though he has underpaid them. Berta always had a pipe in her mouth. I like to anticipate what the director might do with the Act 1 finale, for which all sorts of clever stagings have been devised. Here, the soldiers sent to arrest the “drunken” Almaviva wind up rotating in place, while various carrots are swung overhead. Huh?
It seemed that the Act 2 finale was cut just a little bit to bring the curtain down a few seconds before 11:00, at which time overtime charges kick in.
Overall, the performance did not sparkle as much as it might have. For that, and the baffling staging, I will award a “beta,” but barely.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
La Fanciulla del West, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Jan. 8 2011
Our local theater was fuller than expected when I arrived an hour before curtain time—I had to sit a row up from my usual spot. At curtain time, most of the seats up from the crossover aisle were occupied. Not bad for a opera that my father described as “second-rate Puccini.” But there were incentives: not only Deborah Voigt and Marcello Giordani as Minnie and Dick Johnson, but in the pit was our own Nicola Luisotti, who is making a considerable splash at San Francisco Opera as a Verdi and Puccini conductor.
San Francisco presented Fanciulla about 6 months ago; New York’s worked better. Act 1 is the whole interior of the Polka Saloon, with a big bar on the left, a wall with dirty windows on the right, and a roof overhead. (San Francisco’s was more “open air,” with a smaller bar on the left, a staircase to the right, and the rest open to the elements with a rock face in back.) In Act 2 we see the interior of Minnie’s cabin, thanks to a missing wall, but again we get a roof. Johnson gets to hide in the attic, courtesy of a pull-down staircase, rather than just climbing up the side of Minnie’s bed. Act 3 takes place on the Main Street of a Western town familiar to movie-goers, rather than in a canyon in the mountains, where the noose dangles from a skyhook.
The singers and conductor made a strong argument for this less-performed opera. Particularly impressive was Deborah Voigt’s entrance in Act 1 to break up the brawl in her saloon. She fired a rifle using real blanks, judging from the flash emanating from the muzzle, and took charge of the stage. The poker game with Jack Rance at the end of Act 2 is always a winner, with the soft drumbeats (echoes of Madama Butterfly?) turning the screws of tension. The finale of Act 3, with Minnie pleading for Johnson’s life, and Sonora maintaining that acceding to her wishes would be the best way to repay her for all that she has done for her “boys,” was surprisingly moving.
The cast:
Minnie: Deborah Voigt
Dick Johnson: Marcello Giordani
Jack Rance: Lucio Gallo
Ashby: Keith Miller
Sonora: Dwayne Croft
Wowkle: Ginger Costa-Jackson
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Everyone sang well, but I continue to be particularly impressed with Keith Miller and his sonorous bass voice, and hope to hear him in larger parts. Overall, my best Fanciulla yet—a very solid beta.
San Francisco presented Fanciulla about 6 months ago; New York’s worked better. Act 1 is the whole interior of the Polka Saloon, with a big bar on the left, a wall with dirty windows on the right, and a roof overhead. (San Francisco’s was more “open air,” with a smaller bar on the left, a staircase to the right, and the rest open to the elements with a rock face in back.) In Act 2 we see the interior of Minnie’s cabin, thanks to a missing wall, but again we get a roof. Johnson gets to hide in the attic, courtesy of a pull-down staircase, rather than just climbing up the side of Minnie’s bed. Act 3 takes place on the Main Street of a Western town familiar to movie-goers, rather than in a canyon in the mountains, where the noose dangles from a skyhook.
The singers and conductor made a strong argument for this less-performed opera. Particularly impressive was Deborah Voigt’s entrance in Act 1 to break up the brawl in her saloon. She fired a rifle using real blanks, judging from the flash emanating from the muzzle, and took charge of the stage. The poker game with Jack Rance at the end of Act 2 is always a winner, with the soft drumbeats (echoes of Madama Butterfly?) turning the screws of tension. The finale of Act 3, with Minnie pleading for Johnson’s life, and Sonora maintaining that acceding to her wishes would be the best way to repay her for all that she has done for her “boys,” was surprisingly moving.
The cast:
Minnie: Deborah Voigt
Dick Johnson: Marcello Giordani
Jack Rance: Lucio Gallo
Ashby: Keith Miller
Sonora: Dwayne Croft
Wowkle: Ginger Costa-Jackson
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Everyone sang well, but I continue to be particularly impressed with Keith Miller and his sonorous bass voice, and hope to hear him in larger parts. Overall, my best Fanciulla yet—a very solid beta.
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