Richard Sasanow - Page 17

Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan took the Grammy's Best Classical Solo Vocal Album Sunday night with her mash-up of George Gershwin, Alban Berg and Luciano Berio, “CRAZY GIRL CRAZY”--not only singing but conducting the Ludwig Orchestra.

There have been starrier casts heading up Donizetti's L'ELISIR D'AMORE at the Met--put the opera's name in the NY Times search engine and the first one that shows up is the debut of the famed tenor Tito Schipa in 1932, with bass Ezio Pinza as the quack snake-oil salesman Dulcamara. But this year's principals, soprano Pretty Yende and tenor Matthew Polenzani, gave more than enough pleasure (and then some) to send the audience out cheering.

After a string of cancellations--including the Met's new TOSCA--tenor Jonas Kaufmann made a triumphant return to New York last Saturday at Carnegie Hall, in a recital with his frequent collaborator Helmut Deutsch. Of course, he could have been singing the telephone book and this audience would have lapped it up; instead, he performed Schubert's famed song cycle for tenor and piano, DIE SCHOENE MUELLERIN (THE MILLER'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER).

By the time you read this, another year's edition of PROTOTYPE--New York's two-week festival of new opera-theatre/music-theatre works different from most anything you've ever seen before--will be gone and it was another to be grateful for. The last event on my list was a totally original and stunning, immersive piece called THE ECHO DRIFT, with a scintillating score composed by Mikael Karlsson, and a brilliant environmental production by Elle Kunnos de Voss in their first collaboration.

Even if it were just for its history lesson about the lavender scare of the '50s-- the witch hunt and the mass firings of gay men and women from the federal government during the McCarthy era--FELLOW TRAVELERS by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce would be well worth seeing. But there's so much more to the opera, which had its local debut at the New York PROTOTYPE 2018 this past weekend, directed by Kevin Newbury, at the Gerald Lynch Theatre--including some of the most gorgeous opera music in recent memory.

'Memories of Things Past'--'A la recherche du temps perdu' in Proust-speak--and very much in the past it was, for me at least, going in to ACQUANETTA, the piece that opened this year's iteration of the PROTOTYPE. Its name and purported subject--horror films--conjured up childhood memories for me. Musically and dramatically, however, ACQUANETTA--by Michael Gordon, composer (of 'Bang on a Can' fame), Deborah Artman, librettist (ditto)--was very much in the present and in a class of its own, seen January 10 at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center.

With less than a week until the opening of New York's PROTOTYPE 2018, I was Skype-ing with the producers--no, not Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick--but Jecca Barry (of Beth Morrison Projects, BMP) and Kim Whitener (of HERE), who seem pretty calm. (Actually, they're two of four producers, the others being the eponymous Beth Morrison and Kristin Martin of HERE.) What's to be nervous about? After all they only have 8 new-opera/new-theatre productions (plus other events) opening between January 9th and 20th, including a couple of world premieres.

The trials and tribulations of the Met's new take on Puccini's TOSCA have been well documented--with all three principals replaced along with two conductors--and it would be nice to be able to say that everything came out happily-ever-after. Alas. There's nothing wrong with the company's surprise-free new take on one of Italian opera's most famous works that a stronger director couldn't come in and cure.

It's just about time to wish you all a happy 2018--but I'm not quite ready to put 2017 to rest. Though it won't go into the annals as one of the best years ever, there were quite enough performances and performers that made this year a winner for me, operatically speaking at least, in my corner of the world.

It was great that the 2017 Richard Tucker Gala was heard live on WQXR.org and on WQXR radio on Sunday, but those of us who were in Carnegie Hall had it much better. This year's winner, soprano Nadine Sierra, sounded wonderful (and looked ravishing, by the way) as she whipped through Verdi's 'Caro nome' (RIGOLETTO) and 'Ah, forse lui Sempre libera'), with secure high notes and thoughtful drama, and Bernstein-Sondheim's 'Tonight' (WEST SIDE STORY), paired with tenor Vittorio Grigolo. She's a charming, extremely gifted performer.

Nothing says Christmas in New York like a performance of Handel's great sacred oratorio MESSIAH--okay, for some it's the windows at one of the big department stores--with some outings decidedly religious, like this week's pair of wonderful performances at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. Featuring the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, with the New York Baroque Incorporated ensemble and some terrific soloists under conductor Daniel Hyde (Saint Thomas's organist and music director), it was a grand start to the season.

The Juilliard Orchestra and Opera beat the Met to the punch this week, featuring French conductor Emmanuel Villaume in a superb concert of Ravel and Debussy, including a lovely performance of Ravel's short opera, L'ENFANT ET LES SORTILEGES, with its clever libretto by the French novelist, Colette. It took place just the night before he was announced to be taking on the premiere of the Met's new TOSCA--left empty when the opera company suspended its former music director James Levine after he was charged with sexual improprieties with minors.

Nothing beats sitting in the opera house for the thrill of hearing singers giving their all. But the new recording of Berlioz's LES TROYENS (THE TROJANS), conducted by John Nelson, comes pretty close. Taken from a couple of live concert performances in Strasbourg, France, at the Salle Erasme, with a cast headed by mezzo Joyce DiDonato as Dido (Didon, en francais), tenor Michael Spyres as Aeneas (Enee) and Marie-Nicole Lemieux as Cassandra (Cassandre) plus that famed Trojan horse--brings us all the chills and thrills we could want, short of being there.

It was a fitting gesture that the Met dedicated this season's performances of Verdi's MESSA DA REQUIEM to the great baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who died on November 22 of brain cancer, at 55. The Russian Hvosotovsky may not have had the largest voice ever heard in his chosen repertoire--the last time I heard him was in IL TROVATORE with Netrebko--but it was unquestionably distinctive and exciting to hear. And he was a powerful stage presence second to none something that the Met has found difficult to muster from its soloists these days.

Anyone arriving at the San Francisco Opera expecting that the new John Adams-Peter Sellars collaboration, GIRLS OF THE GOLDEN WEST, will sound like any of their previous projects--THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER, DR. ATOMIC (also a SF Opera commission) or NIXON IN CHINA--will probably be in for a big surprise. The opera has its world premiere on November 21 in what was once a small town until the boom of California's Gold Rush.

Is it time for a re-evaluation of Massenet's place in the current repertoire and put it up a notch? I wondered after seeing the season's opening performance of the Met's John Cox production of Massenet's THAIS on Saturday afternoon. With the right performers, there's a good case for his juicy, melodic writing--among the plethora of BOHEMES, TURANDOTS and BUTTERYFLYs on the season's schedule--although the stipulation of right performers is, as always, the catch.

Atlanta may be landlocked, but a thrilling new sailing vessel came to town on Saturday night, in the new production of Wagner's DIE FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN), at the Atlanta Opera in Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. The company's General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun commanded the helm of the production--a particularly fitting description for an opera about the sea, how it taketh from and giveth to the men who call it home as well as to the women who love them.

Lincoln Center's White Light Festival devoted a pair of evenings last week to a staged performance of Pergolesi's gorgeous hymn to Mary, STABAT MATER, directed by choreographer Jessica Lang (originally done several years ago at the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate NY). It featured a pair of lyric soloists, soprano Adriana Chuchman and star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, with the Orchestra of St Luke's under Speranza Scappucci's thoughtful baton, at the Rose Theatre of Jazz from Lincoln Center.

It's Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1828 and the city's world-renowned anatomy schools are suffering from a cadaver shortage. Enter two immoral and highly industrious men--William Burke and William Hare--who pick up the slack by murdering disenfranchised citizens and selling their corpses to one of these schools, Dr. Knox's Academy. Perfect story for a chamber opera, eh? Well, yes, actually, says composer Julian Grant (even if it's opening a bit late for Halloween).

It's 'deja vu all over again' goes the quip attributed to the NY Yankees pitcher Yogi Berra. But that's the feeling I had with Thomas Ades's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, with libretto based on the Luis Bunuel film, 'El angel exterminador,' by Tom Cairns and the composer. (Cairns also directed.) Not that the opera looks or sounds like anything else recently produced on the Met's stage, except perhaps for Ades's own TEMPEST. Rather, it's because it seems like the operatic arm of France's Nouvelle Vague, the New Wave, of the late '50s and '60s.