Richard Sasanow - Page 16

When the radiant, intellectual soprano Julia Bullock stepped on stage Carnegie Hall's intimate venue, Weill Recital Hall (just 268 seats), to wild applause, I felt like I was the only one hearing her “live” for the first time. Everyone else there seemed to have a personal relationship with her and her artistry. I'd somehow missed her “live,” in previous recitals and in the title roles of CENDRILLON and CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN at Juilliard. My loss--and a significant one.

The Juilliard School pulled out all the stops for Stephen Wadsworth's production of HIPPOLYTE ET ARICIE (1733) by Jean-Philippe Rameau this week. Gorgeously designed by Charlie Corcoran with marvelous costumes by Sarah Cubbage, Juilliard has the resources to do it right, with professional level performers from their Historical Performance, Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Dance departments plus the Juilliard415 early music ensemble under Stephen Stubbs.

When tenor Lawrence Brownlee--he of the sweet, cultured tones and ringing high Cs--was first asked to put a recital together by Carnegie Hall, he chose Robert Schumann's “Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love),” the song cycle about rapture, disillusionment and regret as the centerpiece. But in filling out the program, he turned to something very different--a work, in fact, that hadn't been written yet, reflecting his life as a black man in America: “Cycles of My Being” by composer Tyshawn Sorey and poet/lyricist Terrance Hayes.

The Met's new CENDRILLON is a Cinderella of a production, finally allowing Massenet's take on the classic tale of the girl from the cinders who finds her Prince Charming to reach the Met's stage 119 years after its premiere at the Opera-Comique in Paris.

Italo Montemezzi's L'AMORE DEI TRE RE, which played four performances at City Opera's Rose Theate this weekend, was greeted as a masterpiece when it premiered at La Scala in 1913 proved popular for years at the Met. Today, I'm not sure that even Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann as the lovers could keep it afloat.

It's hard for opera singers to keep off the radar when they're dipping their feet into a new role--particularly if the role is Tristan in Wagner's great opera, or if your name is Jonas Kaufmann. Yes, the first of the Boston Symphony's string of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, Act II concerts was on their home turf last week, but Kaufmann and Nylund were not much more than vestal virgins being sacrificed at the altar of Opera at Carnegie Hall last night. It gave us much to look forward to. To say the least.

I must admit that Christ Church Cathedral Choir--performing at New York's St. Thomas Church 5th Avenue last week to kick off a final tour with retiring Music Director/conductor John Darlington--knocked my socks off with the first part of its program. The men and boys of the choir--a 500-year-old institution founded in Oxford, UK, numbering just 27 voices--not only filled every inch of St. Thomas with amazing sound, as if they were many times that number, but performed the first half the program of British choral masterpieces a capella.

LUISA MILLER isn't one of Verdi's greatest hits, written not long before RIGOLETTO but dramatically (and craft-wise) a quite a way off. Despite plenty of “love and intrigue,” Salvatore Cammarano'a libretto (based on the play of that name by Friedrich Schiller) never really takes flight, with too much exposition needed to justify the action. Still, when it's performed by a cast this good—and with the Met orchestra in fine form under Bertrand de Billy--it can be surprisingly potent. And this performance was.

There's no 'Enry 'Iggins or 'Liza Doolittle in Donizetti's IL PIGMALIONE or Rameau's PIGMALION--we'll have to wait for Lincoln Center Theatre's MY FAIR LADY revival (based on Shaw's PYGMALION) next month for that. But this pair of oddities, produced by New York City Opera last weekend at the Gerald Lynch Theatre, gave us the chance to see how the legend of the man who fell in love with a statue and brought it to life was handled by a pair of major composers--if not proving their neglect has been unwarranted.

Just about the most spectacular opera event of the season so far arrived at Carnegie Hall Sunday afternoon, with the English Concert and Harry Bicket making their annual foray into Handel territory, with a superb RINALDO.

To answer the most burning question for many: Yes, Broadway's Kelli O'Hara can sing opera, acquitting herself nobly and well in the company of “real” opera singers and filling the huge Met Opera without a mike. (FYI: She did study opera herself in her early days.) She brought theatrical pizzazz and was a great partner, as the maid, Despina, for the wonderful, resonant British baritone Christopher Maltman (Don Alfonso) as the co-conspirators of the piece, in director Phelim McDermott's manic production.

'My goal at the moment is to sound like a dead Italian,' says British baritone Christopher Maltman, who stars as Don Alfonso with Broadway's Kelli O'Hara as Despina, co-conspirators against young lovers in the Met's new production of Mozart's comedy COSI FAN TUTTE. 'Or, at least, to sound like a 'live' dead Italian.'

When Christine Goerke took on the title role in the Met's revival of Richard Strauss's masterwork ELEKTRA--the final work of director Patrice Chereau--she wasn't so much competing with Nina Stemme, who sang the premiere of the production last spring, but with herself. Six months before this version first came to Lincoln Center, Goerke performed the role in concert with the Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall and blew the roof off. She was a transfixing, sensational presence that you just couldn't keep your eyes off.

When I first heard soprano Hyesang Park and tenor Kang Wang--two of the bright young singers featured in last weekend's Juilliard and the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Program concert--they were leads in a charming production of Bellini's LA SONNAMBULA at the school. On Friday evening, they were two of the stellar performers in “An Evening of Verdi”--extended excerpts from four operas with the Juilliard Orchestra doing a fluid job under Maestro Evan Rogister, who was also particularly attentive to the needs of the singers.

When soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci walked on stage at Zankel Hall for her recital the other night, I thought I had wandered into an Antonioni movie, with a ravishing diva (usually played by Monica Vitti) about to perform for a rapt audience. Then she opened her mouth and sang the first of a series of songs by Debussy (texts by Verlaine) and I knew I was in the right place: heaven.

A lot of risk, fast rotations in perfect unison, a precarious balance point. No, I'm not talking about doing a twizzle in Olympic ice-dancing--but starring in SEMIRAMIDE by Gioacchino Rossini, a man who believed there was no such thing as too many runs, roulades and high notes. Neither did soprano Angela Meade, who fearlessly stars in the Met's current run of this dazzlingly difficult piece.

Wagner aplenty, Wagner galore. After starting the week off with the Met's PARSIFAL under the exciting Nezet-Seguin, I ended it with another Wagner, DIE WALKURE, in a sweeping account of Act I from the New York Philharmonic under its music director designate, Jaap van Zweden.

Richard Wagner's last opera, PARSIFAL, is a tough nut to crack. With its highly religious overtones, lack of action and incredible length (it ran about 5 hours 40 minutes the other night), it's not exactly a 'light night' at the opera--even if for those of us who consider opera to be a 'light night'. Still, with the right cast and conductor, it can be transcendent. The Met's new revival came pretty close to getting us there.

Opera Philadelphia's production of the George Benjamin-Martin Crimp WRITTEN ON SKIN is another feather in the cap of the company that's quickly becoming the one to watch in the world of contemporary opera.

In many areas of the arts in New York, January is a quiet month. But in the opera world, the last few weeks certainly have been jumping. It has also been a fine time for asking 'What is an Opera?' For me, January started with Prototype 2018's ACQUANETTA and ended this past weekend--with many in between--with New York City Opera's 'first mariachi opera,' CRUZAR LA CARA DE LA LUNA (TO CROSS THE FACE OF THE MOON).