Richard Sasanow - Page 25

“Often when I tell people I'm doing a new production, the first question they ask is: 'What time period are you going to do it in and where?' I think that's a superficial approach, almost a cliche,” says Tomer Zvulun, General and Artistic Director of the Atlanta Opera. “The first thing I ask myself is: Why am I telling this story now? Why would the audience care? And, how would I connect with them in the most effect way while respecting the piece?” But that's not Tvulun's point of view.

On paper, Vivaldi's 1737 opera seria CATONE IN UTICA--involving a confrontation between Cato and Caesar--seems a big mess: The music from the first act is missing and musicologists can't agree what the third act should look and sound like, leaving Act II to make or break a performance of the opera. Opera Lafayette brought us a version that sometimes thrilled us, sometimes tantalized us, but always made us grateful for the performance, fluidly directed by Tazewell Thompson.

The Met's production of Verdi's great opera RIGOLETTO, is often referred to as the 'Ratpack' version--because it is set in the Las Vegas days of Frank Sinatra and his high-living cronies. From its debut, it was a huge success for the company and with good cause. It was brilliantly conceived and sung, even though the title role seemed fuzzier than it usually is in the standard setting. But how would it stand up, season after season, I wondered, when the novelty wore off? The good news is that the production (excitingly designed by Christine Jones) not only remains effective and entertaining, but, in a key way, it is even better than at the premiere nearly three years ago.

Who or what is Lulu, the eponymous character in Alban Berg's landmark opera? Is she saint or sinner? Femme fatale or victim? Put-upon or mistress of her own fate? Whatever else she might be, she is fabulous in the hands of German soprano Marlis Petersen, as the center of William Kentridge's vibrant, thrilling new production at the Met.

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation's annual galas--celebrating each year's winner of the Tucker Award to young American singers--are known for two things. First, they are notoriously fun evenings of opera warhorses and, second, they are guessing games: Which of the singers scheduled to perform won't show up? This year's gala fulfilled the first object delectably, as it celebrated mezzo Jamie Barton, but, surprise!, almost everyone appeared as scheduled, with one very noticeable exception.

The title character in Puccini's TOSCA is the quintessential diva--a grand performer ('goddess' in Italian) who thinks the world revolves around her, particularly when it comers to her lover, painter Mario Cavaradossi. The same might be said for soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who used to be a top attraction at the Met, until cancellations and other prima donna-ish actions saw her fall from favor, despite her fine singing and acting skills. Well, she came back for two performances of her well-traveled (and -received) Floria Tosca and the result was, well, disappointing.

The recital at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on October 24 by the winners of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition was like an “amuse bouche”--a gift from the chef at the start of a meal at a fine French restaurant to tickle your tongue. It was absolutely delicious, but left you hungering for more.

When singers seem to come out of nowhere, it's usually not the case at all, but the culmination of years of hard work. But for Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko--the Met's current Gilda in the lively 'Ratpack' production of Verdi's RIGOLETTO--it certainly seemed like it.

One thing you should know about Richard Strauss's ELEKTRA: When it's done right, the audience works itself into a fever pitch and—after the orchestra has played the final notes—it stands and screams its head off. I've seen this before and it happened again the other night, with sopranos Christine Goerke in the title role and Gun-Brit Barkmin as her sister Chrysothemis, in an exhilarating performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under its music director Andris Nelsons.

Almost 40 years ago, on short notice, the great tenor Jon Vickers (who died this summer at 90) caused a scandal when he pulled out of the premiere of the Met's still-current production of Wagner's 'Tannhauser' because he considered the opera anti-Christian. Well, nothing that exciting happened when tenor Johan Botha took the stage in the title role of the opera last week--merely some wonderful singing.

Bravo to the Collegiate Chorale for taking things up a notch--changing its name to MasterVoices and taking on an ambitious season that opened with a semi-staged production of Gilbert & Sullivan's THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE at New York City Center, with a game cast including some top Broadway performers and opera singer Deborah Voigt. But this is the house that City Center ENCORES! built over the last 20 years—including originating the long-running Broadway production of Kander & Ebb's CHICAGO—and they should have known to bring in a stronger director to help the evening jell.

The Met came late to the trio of Donizetti operas about British queens, when it finally mounted ANNA BOLENA mounted for Anna Netrebko in 2011. This was long after Beverly Sills made her deal with the devil, trading her voice for the cover of Time Magazine, by singing Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I at New York City Opera. The Met is finally getting around to mounting its own take on the operas this season (the so-called Tudor Trilogy) not for Netrebko but for American Sondra Radvanovsky. As Anna, she delivers a thrilling, go-for-broke performance.

When Verdi and Boito were writing their operatic version of Shakespeare's OTHELLO, they were competing with the already-successful (though less faithful) version written by Rossini and thought about calling their opera IAGO. After seeing Bartlett Sher's new production of the Verdi OTELLO, I wondered whether it might have been renamed DESDEMONA--because soprano Sonya Yoncheva gave the opera's most devastating and gorgeous performance.

Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky hadn't even opened his mouth, as the Count di Luna, when the audience went wild at the season's premiere of Verdi's IL TROVATORE. It was as if he had just sung Sondheim's “I'm Still Here”--after announcing earlier this year that he had a brain tumor and was cancelling most of the TROVATORE performances--and was proving his perseverance in the face of mortality.

With the season's first performance of Donizetti's ANNA BOLENA--that's Henry VIII's Anne Boleyn to all you Masterpiece Theatre fans--at the Met, the big news is that it's soprano Sondra Radvanovsky's first part of the Tudor Trilogy, with MARIA STUARDA and ROBERTO DEVEREUX to come later in the season. Alongside her, as Jane (here, Giovanna) Seymour, Boleyn's successor as consort to Henry, is mezzo Jamie Barton, this year's winner of the Richard Tucker Award, a past winner of the Met Council Auditions (and many other major awards) and a sensation when she sang her first big role at the Met two years ago, Adalgisa in Bellini's NORMA.

When I heard mezzo Jamie Barton at the Metropolitan Opera's recital in Central Park in the summer of 2014, she would have knocked my socks off--if I hadn't been wearing sandals. This time around­--newly anointed winner of the 2015 Richard Tucker Award--at a concert presented by WQXR at New York's Greene Space in SoHo, I was wearing my argyles and, sure enough, I went home barefoot. Barton proved, once again, that she's “the real thing.”

Considering all the second-rate operas by men that have received first-rate productions at major houses, it's a shock that the performances of Dame Ethel Smyth's early 20th-century opera, THE WRECKERS, at Bard Music Festival was the stage premiere of the work in this country. And a dazzling one it was. The question is: “What took so long?” The answer, I suppose, is “Because Conductor Leon Botstein didn't get on the case earlier.”

At a time when we're often inundated with yet another TOSCA, BOHEME or CARMEN at major opera houses, the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, NY--a couple of hours north of New York City in summer traffic--manages to bring some relief, thanks to the efforts of its Music Director Will Crutchfield. On July 11, Gaetano Donizetti's LA FAVORITE showed us that the composer of LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, L'ELISIR D'AMORE and the Tudor Queens Trilogy, among so many others, had more than a few tricks up his sleeve.

At an hour-and-a-half's drive, the historic citadel at Masada--the mountain fortress in Israel's Judean Desert--is close enough to visit from Jerusalem as part of a pilgrimage or other tourism adventure. For visitors to the Israeli Opera Festival, held at the foot of Masada, the better idea may be to stay at one of the Dead Sea hotels, so that when you're not taking in your cultural fix, you can take in some local mud, float in the 33% salt water, contemplate Jordan on the opposite side of the sea, or simply bask in the sun at the lowest place on earth.

At Masada—the mountain fortress in Israel's Judean Desert--a group of besieged Jewish rebels killed themselves rather than be taken alive by the Romans almost 2000 years ago. In Puccini's TOSCA, the eponymous heroine jumps from Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo rather than being taken prisoner for killing the evil chief of police, Scarpia. So much for the logic of staging this intimate work as part of the fifth edition of the Israeli Opera Festival--but, remarkably, the very traditional production by French director Nicolas Joel worked very well indeed in the great outdoors.