Richard Sasanow - Page 25

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.

Pity the poor also-rans in operatic history: Leoncavallo's LA BOHEME and even Rossini's OTELLO are perhaps the most famous titles. Oh, yes: We mustn't forget Giovanni Paisiello's IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA—not after hearing On Site Opera's production in New York last week, we can't. Downstairs, upstairs, in m'lady's library, On Site introduced much of its audience last week to an “alternative universe” version of the Almavivas and the wily barber, Figaro, in a BARBIERE composed decades before the familiar version by Rossini.

It didn't have a ten-ton set, a fake diva flying from a parapet, or a star-studded cast, but Opera Lafayette's L'EPREUVE VILLAGEOISE (THE VILLAGE TRIAL) had one thing noticeably absent from the opera stage in New York this season: charm aplenty, charm galore.

The new opera season doesn't start till September at the earliest. What's an opera fan to do until the Met's curtain goes up on September 21? Well, with a little bit of effort, opera in New York and the surrounding states during the summer months can offer quite a bit.

The Met was running on all cylinders for the last performance of the season, with Verdi's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA in an energized version of the production that premiered in 2012. The trio of principals--soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as Amelia, tenor Piotr Beczala as Gustavo and baritone Alexey Markov as Anckarstrom--gave ringing, heart-felt performances in a concept from David Alden that previously seemed half-baked. Now, the singing and acting were so good that one could forget the conceit's shortcomings.

It was 'out with the old, in with the new' for another of the Franco Zeffirelli productions that were once the Metropolitan Opera's bread and butter, designed for audiences to cheer for the scenery even when the cast might not have been top drawer. This time, the victims of changing times (and administrations) were the twin bill of Mascagni's CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA and Leoncavallo's PAGLIACCI.

After I read that the new production of Janacek's JENUFA at the beautiful Teatro Comunale opera house in Bologna originated at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels--home of some of the most over-the-top conceits in the opera world--I thought I was ready for anything. I was wrong.

A season ago, when soprano Olga Peretyatko made her Met debut as Elvira in Bellini's I PURITANI, I marveled at her gorgeous voice and stamina, but noted that her inexperience in the role showed. I hoped for more from her when she got it under her belt. What a difference a year makes! As the heroine in a new production by Fabio Ceresa at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy (a co-venture with Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), she was, simply, wonderful, at the performance on April 19.

Stephanie Blythe--who's at the Met these days singing Baba the Turk in Stravinsky's THE RAKE'S PROGRESS--“abhors labels.” That's why, despite a cavernous voice that has become even deeper with age and could easily be termed mezzo or contralto, she tells me to call her “a girl singer.”

What a great idea it was for the Met to mount revivals of Verdi's ERNANI and DON CARLO at the same time! It offers an opportunity to compare two operas that have much in common--and a production well worth seeing.

Nine years before IL TROVATORE took the prize for Verdi's most outlandish story line--with gypsies, stolen babies and mistaken identities--there was ERNANI, with a different kind of complicated plot to make your head spin. The Met's current revival of its 1983 production of the opera stars a formidable quartet: soprano Angela Meade, tenor Franceso Meli, bass-baritone Dmitry Belosselskiy and, last but certainly not least, tenor/baritone Placido Domingo.

Long before there was “American Idol” or “The Voice,” there were the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions. A 62-year tradition in the opera world, it comes to a head at the National Council Auditions Finals Concert, which took place this year on Sunday afternoon. It was the culmination of a months-long series of competitions at the district, regional and national levels. And while it's not glitzy and not performed before an audience of millions, well, it's at the Met. Enough said.

The title role of Donizetti's LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR was so important to star sopranos during the last half of the 20th century, that it's hard to recall that in Caruso's day, the tenor was the main attraction. I thought of that during the current performance of the opera at the met, with Russian soprano Albina Shagimuratova as the eponymous heroine and Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja as her beloved Edgardo. Well...the tenor is back.