Richard Sasanow - Page 11

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.

You'd never know that the Met's production of Francis Poulenc's DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES is over 40 years old, except for a few giveaways. There are no dancing nuns, no nudity, no screeching train whistle as the women go to their deaths (a la SWEENEY TODD). This fictionalized version of the story of Carmelite nuns who were martyred during the French Revolution, sent to the guillotine, is certainly the most simple and eloquent work on the Met's stage these days.

The line between Broadway-type musical theatre and opera becomes finer by the year--though I dare say that TOOTSIE is unlikely to be showing up at the Met any time soon. But the Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin-Moss Hart LADY IN THE DARK might have morphed in a slightly different, better piece of music theatre if it arrived in the 21st century rather than World War II.

Mezzo Joyce DiDonato knows quite a bit about being Cinderella--after all, she's played the title characters in Rossini's CENERENTOLA and Massenet's CENDRILLON at the Met and other major opera houses. But it also appears she's a first-rate “fairy godmother,” as she proved with a group of emerging artists in a series of Master Classes in Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Room of the Resnick Education Wing last week.

Helen of Troy didn't launch a thousand ships but was a put-upon sexual victim and Marilyn Monroe--born Norma Jeane Baker, of the title--was a cloud in the shape of a woman. It was also a “disaster to be a girl” in those days before #MeToo, with powerful men (whether Menelaus or Arthur Miller) holding beautiful women captive (and worse). That was just part of Anne Carson's new ”dramatic work,” NORMA JEANE BAKER OF TROY, with its effective tonal score by Paul Clark, and two wonderful performers, soprano Renee Fleming and British actor Ben Whishaw, under director Katie Mitchell.

“Audacious” can mean daring--and Belgian director Ivo van Hove certainly fits that description for his approaches to Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE and THE CRUCIBLE and numerous other theatre pieces. But when it came to Leos Janacek's DIARY OF ONE WHO DISAPPEARED, van Hove's work (with the Dutch company, Muziektheater Transparent) might take on another of the word's meanings: presumptuous and arrogant, perhaps, even disrespectful.

While the cast for the season's revival of Mozart's LA CLEMENZA DI TITO looked good on paper, it didn't even hint at how good the singing was going to be at the Met this week. From top—tenor Matthew Polenzani, elegant and vibrant in the title role (“Se all'impero”), and the great mezzo Joyce DiDonato as Sesto (who delivers the opera's “hit” aria, “Parto, parto,” and more in opulent style)--to bottom, the cast delivered in every way possible.

Judging by the number of small opera companies in New York alone--see the 2019 New York Opera Fest that starts performances next month--there's no shortage of up and coming opera singers trying to make their way on the scene. But there's no showcase like the Finals Concert of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions to give a singer a leg up--and this year's group of talented performers seemed to give us more hope than usual that all's right with the world…at least when it comes to opera.

There's lots to enjoy in the Met's revival of DIE WALKURE, the second part of Richard Wagner's great tetralogy, DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, better known simply as Wagner's Ring Cycle, which had its first performance of the season on Monday night--all five hours of it!--under the pulsating control of Philippe Jordan and the Met orchestra in full throttle. The thrills started with the entrance of soprano Christine Goerke as Brunnhilde, tenor Stuart Skelton and soprano Eva Marie Westbroek as the incestuous Siegmund and Sieglinde, the clarion mezzo Jamie Barton as Fricka, goddess of marriage. For sheer pleasure and delight, however, there's nothing that beats the best-known section of the opera, “The Ride of the Valkyries,” which opens Act III.

Was the pairing of Iain Bell and Mark Campbell--respectively, composer and librettist of New York City Opera's (NYCO) world premiere STONEWALL--'love at first sight”? I asked them. We were at the workshop in New York earlier this month that allowed them and director Leonard Foglia to cross the t's and dot the i's (and hear their new work performed).

Since my days as a pothead are long gone (LOL)—did anyone ever watch 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY without a little help from a friend?--I came to the Boston Symphony's (BSO) concert at Carnegie Hall the other night more interested in hearing the excerpts from Richard Strauss's CAPRICCIO, including Renee Fleming in its final scene, than in the composer's ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA. As it turned out, both parts of the concert, under Music Director Andris Nelsons, had much to recommend.

Can opera be a medium for social commentary and change? I've been thinking about this lately--or, more accurately, yet again--since attending a preview of the new Jeanne Tesori-Tazewell Thompson opera, BLUE, which was part of the Guggenheim Museum's fascinating Works & Process series. The performance of excerpts and roundtable with its creators were part of preparations for the work's world premiere this summer at the Glimmerglass Festival.

If Robert Lepage's production of Wagner's Ring Cycle (formally, DER RING DAS NIBELUNGEN) had worked as smoothly when it opened in 2010 as it did at this season's marvelous premiere of its prologue, DAS RHEINGOLD, on Saturday afternoon, there probably still would have been complaints--not about its focus on technology but on its traditional approach. Personally, i liked it.

The Crypt Sessions, which take place in the stone chamber beneath the Church of the Intercession on West 155th Street in Manhattan, might conjure up visions of horror, though it bears no relation to HBO's long-running anthology, “Tales from the Crypt.” Add that the center of attraction for the recital of the powerfully expressive baritone, Lucas Meachem, was Mahler's KINDERTOTENLIEDER, which translates to the grisly sounding (but actually elegant) “Songs on the Death of Children,” and one might be forgiven for thinking so. The result, in fact, was about as far from that as possible.

Will anyone else but Ambrogio Maestri bring the same dynamism to Robert Carsen's 1950's take on Verdi's masterpiece, FALSTAFF? Time will tell. But the return of the wonderful production, with the great Met orchestra under conductor Richard Farnes and an all-around terrific cast, brought a little sunshine into the gray winter in New York.

Composer, conductor and pianist Andre Previn has died at the age of 89 on February 28. Previn was composer of the opera versions of Tennessee Williams's A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and Noel Coward's BRIEF ENCOUNTER, dozens of orchestral works, film scores, jazz works and the score for Tom Stoppard's 1977 play, EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR. He was also music director of the Houston Symphony, LA Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra.