Richard Sasanow - Page 18

The trio of soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, mezzo Joyce DiDonato and tenor Joseph Calleja promised a fine evening of singing for the Met's new NORMA and, for the most part, there wasn't much to quibble about. Too bad Sir David McVicar--and his design team--couldn't come up with something a little bolder, a little braver, a little more inventive than wandering trees and a giant lair that looked like an igloo in the off season to anchor its new production.

Winston Churchill called Russia 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.' Well, Mother Russia had nothing on ELIZABETH CREE, the new chamber opera by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, based on Peter Ackroyd's novel--having all those traits plus a brilliant score and a smart libretto that raced forward with cinematic speed.

Superficially, Wolfgang Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE (or DIE ZAUBERFLOTE for you purists) and David Hertzberg's THE WAKE WORLD couldn't seem less alike and, taken together, they stretch the definition of what makes an opera. Yet, as part of Opera Philadelphia's daring new O17 opera festival, they have a surprising amount in common including spectacular scores that demand to be heard again and again.

FOUR NIGHTS OF DREAM, composer/librettist Moto Osada's opera performed in its US premiere last week at the Japan Society, is based on a cornerstone of 20th century Japanese literature, 'Ten Nights of Dream' by Natsume Soseki. While the four stories Osada has chosen may seem stylized and foreign to the Western sensibility, there is no such difficulty in being drawn in by his interesting, dynamic score--by turns lyric and harshly modern--and the staging by Alec Duffy.

The last of the new operas at the center of Opera Philadelphia's O17 opera fest is THE WAKE WORLD, a chamber piece written by composer/librettist David Hertzberg and directed by RB Schlather. It opens on Monday September 18 at the Barnes collection--the great museum in central Philadelphia--and promises a one-of-a-kind experience for those savvy enough to snare a ticket. (Its five performances are sold out.)

Tokyo and New York City are the two home cities of composer Moto Osada, whose new chamber opera, FOUR NIGHTS OF DREAM will have its North American premiere at the Japan Society in Manhattan on September 13, directed by Alec Duffy.

The last time the Met did Puccini's LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST--GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST--it was such a dispiriting affair that I was ready to write it off as past its expiration date. New York City Opera to the rescue!, opening its season with a lively revival of the Italian master's work about the California Gold Rush and the tough-babe-with-a-heart-of-marshmallow who runs the saloon.

Though the title role in Mozart's DON GIOVANNI goes to the fabled lady killer--and Mostly Mozart's production was lucky to have a first-rate Don in baritone Christopher Maltman--the opera is a real ensemble piece, with every one of a half dozen characters key to a successful performance. In the Budapest Festival Orchestra's lively performance at Mostly Mozart under conductor and director Ivan Fischer, there was an extra element: an ensemble that tripled as chorus, dancers and, yes, scenery.

There are opera festivals and then there are OPERA FESTIVALS, but none that promise to be the equivalent of Opera Philadelphia's O17, which opens on September 14 for a 12-day run. It's a dazzling array of the old and new, the well-known and emerging, being produced at prestigious venues around the city, from the Academy of Music to the Barnes Foundation. There's even a screening in Independence Park of a hit from the last opera season.

Well, no one can accuse Mostly Mozart of being in a rut. Even though the name of this season's first program, “The Singing Heart,” under Music director Louis Langree (heard on the 26th), is not so different from last year's opener, “The Illuminated Heart,” the two evenings couldn't have been more different. They did have one thing in common: They were both wonderful.

With Grammy-nominated American composer Mason Bates dipping his toe into full-length operatic waters for the first time--and star librettist Mark Campbell doing it for the umpteenth--the Guggenheim Museum's “Works & Process” series gave an extended peak into the development of their new opera, THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS, which premieres on July 22 at the Santa Fe Opera (SFO). Looking back at that evening in April, I recall how the extended musical excerpts gave the audience a good idea of the brilliance of Bates's score and the general excitement in store.

ACI, GALATEA E POLIFEMO (ACIS, GALATEA AND POLYPHEMUS)--which just opened a short run at Brooklyn's National Sawdust venue, ending on July 20, with star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo--may be the most obscure Handel opera that you think you know but don't. (And it's not an opera, either, for that matter.)

Chemistry in an opera performance is a funny thing. It's not always easy to explain why it's there, but you know when it isn't. But when it works, it works—and, boy, the Caramoor Festival's concert staging of Bellini's IL PIRATA on Saturday was on fire, with Angela Meade as the star soprano and Will Crutchfield on the podium.

Being an opera singer is a little like walking a tightrope without a net--no matter who you're singing with, you're out there on stage, alone, for the crowd to cheer but, also for everyone to hear each glitch or misstep in your singing. Soprano Angela Meade--who's starring as Imogene in Caramoor's concert performance of Bellini's IL PIRATA, a role debut, on July 8--not only did her first wire-walking with a major role but at a big house: the Metropolitan Opera.

Who needs an excuse to leave NYC in the blistering days of summer? It's especially true if you head north to some of the bucolic opera and vocal venues within driving distance.

Classic and contemporary, opera and orchestral, the music doesn't stop when the temperatures climb in New York, whether you're in New York City, or ready to travel to one of the festivals that dot the landscape of the Northeast. Musical life doesn't stop when the Met closes its doors: Here's a look “from here to eternity”…in the first part of our series on summertime's opera/vocal venues, covering New York City and Westchester.

Well, three cheers for On Site Opera, for completing its trilogy of works based on Beaumarchais' 18th century 'Figaro' plays and digging deep into the repertoire to deliver some lesser known works. First, a BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA not by Rossini (theirs, by Giovanni Paisiello) and then a FIGARO not by Mozart (instead, Marcos Portugal). This week, the whip-smart company presented the American premiere, in partnership with the Darius Milhaud Society, of Milhaud's LA MERE COUPABLE (THE GUILTY MOTHER), based on the least known and, to some, the unknown, among the Beaumarchais plays.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a place called Broadway, where you could find still find bills of one-act plays that, more often than not, offered titillation into then-current sexual practices and innovations. Zoom forward 40 years or so and opera has finally caught up with this oh-so-shocking (but-not-really) form of entertainment, with the local premiere of THREE WAY by Robert Paterson and David Cote, directed by John Hoomes.

Can an opera's libretto be true to its literary source without being a carbon copy of it? It not only can—it has to be; otherwise, a work like Peter Eotvos's ANGELS IN AMERICA would end up being as long as the four operas of Wagner's Ring Cycle without saying anything new. I knew that Eotvos's work, which had its New York premiere at New York City Opera last weekend, directed by Sam Helfrich, clocked in at around 2 ½ hours, compared to the seven hours of Tony Kushner's two-part epic. How would it compress all those verbal parries, the humor, the politics, the theatricality, and still be ANGELS?

Just after hearing the wonderfully well sung, semi-staged DAS RHEINGOLD at the NY Philharmonic, under departing Music Director Alan Gilbert, I saw the current Broadway revival of THE LITTLE FOXES. It seemed Richard Wagner's gods and Lillian Hellman's Hubbards had lots in common: The small-minded, self-serving gods of this production, at least, could have been friends and neighbors of the mendacious, corrupt Southerners in Hellman's play (or even of a would-be-royal family in Washington, DC).