Richard Sasanow - Page 11

It's hard to imagine the logistics in putting together a complex program like the one that the audience at Carnegie Hall was treated to on Sunday evening for the 2019 RICHARD TUCKER GALA. But New York-born conductor James Gaffigan pulled it off wonderfully with the help of members of the Met Orchestra and the New York Choral Society--and a gaggle of amazing singers, beginning with this year's winner of the Tucker Award, Lisette Oropesa.

With apologies to Gluck, “Che faremmo senza Jamie Barton?”—'Where would we be without mezzo Jamie Barton?”--in the revival of Mark Morris's production of ORFEO ED EURIDICE at the Met, under Mark Wigglesworth's firmly rhythmic baton. ORFEO, written in the mid-18th century, was an opera of a different stripe for its time. (The Met uses the 1762 Vienna version, one of many.) It leans heavily on dance and choral singing, as well as recitative.

It's easy to give yourself over to the music--and the musicians--that Lash has created (both music and libretto) from the very first notes of the devastatingly beautiful score. It is performed by three bold singers--the commanding mezzo Kirsten Sollek, the determined baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert and eerie yet forceful countertenor Daniel Moody. In addition--and very much integral to its success--there is the dazzling string quartet known as JACK (Christopher Otto and Justin Wulliman, violins; John Pickford Richards, viola; and Jay Campbell, cello). Surprisingly and successfully, there is no conductor.

Five years ago, Anna Netrebko unveiled her take on Verdi's Lady Macbeth at the Met and wowed audiences from here to eternity. But since the first week of the Met season, she's brought her sexy, ebullient and take-no-prisoners Lady Macbeth back and showed that she's even better than ever--singing the pant (and the spots) off the role.

If you can imagine Rossini's IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA with all its comedy but without any of its great arias, you can begin to imagine why Sergei Prokofiev's LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES isn't only anyone's top-ten list of favorite operas. Yet Alessandro Talevi's wild-eyed production at Opera Philadelphia's O19 Festival somehow manages to make the audience laugh itself silly and tap its foot with glee at the famous march that was such a big hit in the composer's time, that he grew sick of it.

Lisette Oropesa, where have you been all my life? Of course, I've heard her before--she's appeared 100 times or so at the Met so one could hardly miss her--but never in a showpiece like the title role of Jules Massenet's MANON, opposite tenor Michael Fabiano's Chevalier des Grieux on the second night of the Met's new season.

Thomas Wolfe--famed for his novels including “Look Homeward, Angel”--is also remembered for the quotable title of one of his short stories: “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.” Judging my weekend at Opera Philadelphia's O19 opera festival, and its two world premieres, DENIS & KATYA and LET ME DIE, he could have also written “Only the Dead Know Philadelphia” (though it might have missed the priceless Brooklyn accents used in the story by this southern writer).

Last January, Joseph Keckler seemed to burst forth, fully blown, like Athena from the head of Zeus, at New York's Prototype Festival (though his emergence was, in fact, no such thing, having already been a staple of the Downtown scene for several years). This month, Philadelphia's got him, at the Opera Philadelphia O19, running from September 20-28, with LET ME DIE. It's a genre-bending performance piece for the baritone, whose voice ascends to tenorial heights, that peppers famous operatic death scenes (with some singing collaborators) with video from Lianne Arnold, his own music and signature comedic je ne sais quoi.

A summer's trip to Cooperstown, NY, is for two distinct audiences: Those who come for the Baseball Hall of Fame and those, like me, who come for the opera--the Glimmerglass Festival, under General Director Francesca Zambello, where i caught up with the John Corigliano-William Hoffman THE GHOSTS OF VERSAILLES, the brand-new BLUE by Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson and a program with Supreme Court Justice (and opera buff) Ginsburg commenting on some of her favorite works.

The first time I heard bass-baritone Davone Tinesa--he off the sensual, resonant voice and startlingly vivid stage presence--it was in Handel's ACI, GALATEA E POLIFEMO (described as a spectacular, streamlined, Cliff-Notes version of a Handel opera), at Brooklyn's National Sawdust. Tines wowed me and I thought that I wanted to hear more of him. He opens July 24, 2019 at Mostly Mozart in THE BLACK CLOWN at the Gerald Lynch Theatre of John Jay College, near Lincoln Center.

This week's opera performances--Teatro Nuova's LA STRANIERA by Bellini and Mostly Mozart's MAGIC FLUTE--proved that opera can be considered alive and well (and living in New York), as long as those producing it believe in it and give us some voices worth hearing.

ACQUANETTA, which just opened at Bard's SummerScape, was the piece that opened 2018's edition of PROTOTYPE festival in New York. Musically and dramatically, written by Michael Gordon, composer (of 'Bang on a Can' fame), Deborah Artman, librettist (ditto), the piece is very much in a class of its own.

Something old, something new…there's still plenty going on for fans of opera and classical vocal music in the Northeast now that summer is upon us. Here's a taste of what to look for.

If there's nothing colder than yesterday's news, the Stonewall riots--that cornerstone of the gay rights movement, 50-years-old this month--should be the equivalent of a frozen Margarita. Instead, it's hot as New York in August, in Leonard Foglia's nonstop production of STONEWALL, the opera by Iain Bell and Mark Campbell that had its world premiere production by New York City Opera at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Rose Theatre, last Friday.

The New York Philharmonic finished up its season with a powerful performance of a new version of the FIDELIO story by composer David Lang, which he neatly titled PRISONER OF THE STATE, summing up a key part of the story. Lang's score and the staging by Elkhanah Pulitzer—and the pulsating performance of the score by the Philharmonic under music director Jaap van Zweden--were triumphs, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats as the 70-minute work unfolded.

For those of us who couldn't wait to hear mezzo Joyce DiDonato in a fully staged performance of Handel's AGRIPPINA—heading to Covent Garden in September and the Met in February in different productions next season—she has given us a first-class preview at the Liceu in Barcelona. For a couple of weeks at the end of May, she tootled around major cities in Europe giving concert performances of the opera, one of Handel's first hits, from Christmas 1709 in Venice when he was finishing his sojourn in Italy.

The spectacularly musical, touchingly dramatic, surprisingly funny and profoundly moving chamber opera, AS ONE, by Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, made its long-overdue return to New York on Thursday, in a production by Matt Gray as part of New York City Opera's spring season.

“It's been quite a ride,” says Kim Reed, co-librettist, filmmaker—and inspiration--for AS ONE, the chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky, with co-librettist Mark Campbell. The work's 27th production, in under five years, opened on May 30 under the auspices of New York City Opera, American Opera Projects (its original commissioner) and Kaufman Music Center at Merkin Hall on West 67 Street in Manhattan.

George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera that has become increasingly (and justifiably) popular in recent years, LES PECHEURS DE PERLES, better known in the English-speaking world as THE PEARL FISHERS. George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera that has become increasingly (and justifiably) popular in recent years, LES PECHEURS DE PERLES, better known in the English-speaking world as THE PEARL FISHERS. The new production--which came from the Theatre an der Wien in Vienna--at Barcelona's beautiful Liceu opera house is by Lotte de Beer, a Dutch director who's known for taking outrageous approaches to standard rep.

For me, concert-going in Barcelona is not simply hearing a singer like Diana Damrau bring beauty and insights to the music of great composers, but where you get to hear her perform this magic. This week's evening of lieder and other art songs, for instance, performed with harpist Xavier de Maistre, was held in a palace--at the Palau de la Musica Catalana to be precise.