Opera – Neil Kurtzman: Recent Episodes
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Memory is a highly fallible record of the past. This divergence from fact to fancy increases with age and its attendant distance from the recalled event, as well as the fog and confabulation that the accumulation of years inevitably accrues.
Despite these difficulties, I started recalling all the cities in which I had heard serious music since my first experience with the genre. My definition of serious music is symphonic and orchestral music, chamber music, ballet, and opera. This is a purely personal definition. I fully realize that others consider an extensive list of other musical forms as serious. I do not mean to denigrate any other musical form.
Toward the end of 1952, when I was a high school student, I decided to go to Carnegie Hall and hear a concert. I had no idea about the program. I’m not even sure how I knew that there would be a concert that evening. As things turned out, the New York Philharmonic played a Bruckner symphony. I don’t recall the rest of the performance. I had not heard of Bruckner before the concert, which was, I think, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.
I didn’t get to an opera house until the fall of 1954 when I heard La Traviata staged by the New York City Opera. This was when the company performed in a theater on West 55th Street. The soprano was Eva Likova. The rest of the cast is forgotten, at least by me. I sat in the last row of the balcony. It was a moving experience.
My first Met performance was Tosca on December 25, 1954. The cast included Licia Albanese, Eugene Conley (substituting for an indisposed Jan Peerce), George London, and Salvatore Baccaloni. I had a seat in the Grand Tier for that show, but for the next seven years, with one or two exceptions, I was a standee. Standing room at the old Met was $2 a person and limited, I think, to 200 people. For a performance with a great singer(s), you had to get online three to four hours before the show. An orchestra seat was $8. A major ambition of mine at the time was to be able to afford to sit down during an opera.
One of the perks of a career in academic medicine is frequent travel. When I was at a medical meeting, I usually went to whatever show was available. Sometimes, a performance was scheduled by the organizers of the meeting. If I were invited as a visiting professor to a medical school or hospital, I would go to whatever was scheduled at the time, or my host would arrange for me to attend a concert or opera. When on vacation, I usually went to a city that offered performances of serious music.
Below is the list of cities in which I attended at least one performance. The cities in which I attended the most concerts, etc, are New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, and Lubbock. It’s based solely on recollection, as I kept no written record.
As I indicated above, memory is faulty, especially when the span is many decades. But the list is the best I can do. If I’ve imagined or omitted, I’m guilty of error, not deception.
New York City
Cooperstown
Boston
Tanglewood
Chicago
Ravinia (Illinois)
Colorado Springs
Aspen
Columbus
Cleveland
New Orleans
Miami
Fort Lauderdale
Santa Fe
El Paso
Lubbock
Dallas
Fort Worth
Houston
San Antonio
Los Angeles
Post (Texas)
San Francisco
Seattle
Williamstown (Mass)
Toronto
Montreal
Vancouver
Mexico City
Buenos Aires
Manaus (Brazil)
Belfast
Dublin
Budapest
Saint Petersburg
Kraków
Vienna
Berlin
Amsterdam
Paris
London
Venice
Milan
Rome
Bari
Naples
Taormina
Catania
Madrid
Barcelona
Seville
Sydney
Tokyo
Hong Kong
Bangkok
So many different outsiders have controlled Sicily that if an alien power were to conquer Earth, it would likely start on that island. Among the temporary rulers of the place are the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Normans, the Angevin French, the Bourbons, and now the Italians. I’ve probably left some passersby out, but what’s a conquest or two among a people who outlasted all of them?
Verdi’s next opera after the blockbusters of Rigoletto, Traviata, and Trovatore was written for Paris with a libretto by the omnipresent Eugène Scribe. Les vêpres siciliennes (I vespri siciliani in its Italian version) took the composer two years to complete because of a variety of snafus. Despite being a big hit at its premiere, it quickly dropped out and is the most infrequently performed of Verdi’s mature operas. It succeeded with a French audience despite depicting the French as bad guys and ending with their massacre.
I find it very hard to understand its relative neglect. It’s a masterpiece on a par with Verdi’s other great operas. Berlioz, music’s greatest critic wrote: “In Les vêpres the penetrating intensity of the melodic expressiveness, the sumptuous, wise variety of the instrumentation, the vastness and poetic sonority of the concerted pieces, the hot color that shines throughout … communicate to this opera an imprint of grandeur, a species of sovereign majesty more distinguishable than in this composer’s earlier products.”
Its story is built around the rebellion in 1282 on Easter. It started in Palermo and led to the death or expulsion of 13,000 French men and women. Hélène is a fervent revolutionary, as is her lover Henri. But things get complex when Henri discovers that Montfort, the leader of the French, is his father. He’s torn between passion and revolutionary zeal on the one hand and filial duty on the other. Hélène is similarly torn. She decides to break with Henri. Procida (the revolutionary leader) is furious at her lack of zeal, as is Henri for her lack of romantic commitment. Then Montfort arrives, takes the couple’s hands, joins them together, and pronounces them married as the bells begin to ring. This is the signal for the Sicilians to rush in and hurl themselves upon Montfort and the French.
Wagner’s Ring Cycle ends as it started. The ring forged from the gold stolen from the Rhine Maidens is returned to them. Brünnhilde, in a stunning solo, sums up much of what has happened in the light years of music drama that have preceded this final scene. Siegfried’s corpse is before her. He’s been stabbed in the back earlier in the opera. After she takes the ring from his lifeless finger and throws it in the Rhine, she mounts a horse and rides into the flames. Valhalla catches fire, as does the hall of the locals. All the gods die, as do most of the mortals. There are a few survivors.
The cycle is a generous smorgasbord of leitmotifs. The opera and the cycle end with the redemption-through-love motif. It’s not clear what has been redeemed by love as only a bit of property has been returned to its rightful owners, but that’s the story and Wagner’s sticking to it. Kirsten Flagstad is the soprano and Wilhelm Furtwängler is the conductor.
Hector Berlioz (1803-1860) completed three operas. The second of these, Les Troyens, is based on Books Two and Four of the Aeneid. Berlioz wrote the libretto himself. It took him two years to write the words and music for the opera, from 1856 to 1858. Most musicologists consider it to be his masterpiece. It’s as impressive as it is long – about four hours and twenty minutes, not counting intermissions. I prefer Benvenuto Cellini, but that’s just a personal opinion. I have seen both operas in performance at the Met. The Trojans is a bladder buster.
The Trojans was never performed in its complete two-part form during Berlioz’s lifetime. A truncated version of Part II was performed at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1863. It made a profound impression on musicians. Meyerbeer is said to have attended 12 performances of this first staging. The first staged performance of the whole opera took place only in 1890, 21 years after Berlioz’s death. The two parts were given on consecutive nights. It is now customary to present the whole opera on a single evening.
The first act depicts the fall of Troy. The Trojan Horse has led to the downfall of the city. The second scene of Act 2 is in Priam’s palace. It’s about to be overrun by Greek soldiers. Cassandre, whose prophesies are as ignored as they are accurate, stabs herself as the Greeks enter. The rest of the Trojan women do likewise committing mass suicide. Cassandre summons one last cry of “Italie!” before collapsing, dead. Énée (Aeneas) is headed there to found Rome. He stops in Carthage (Acts 3-5) before finally going to the peninsula.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was perhaps the greatest musical child prodigy ever. He grew up to be both a virtuoso organist and pianist. As a composer, his music was, and still is, often performed. He composed in almost every genre of music. Of his 12 operas, only Samson et Dalila is part of the standard operatic repertory. During the composer’s life Henry VIII was more popular. The little bits of it I’ve heard suggest that it might deserve a reconsideration.
There’s no need to recite the story of Samson and Delilah as virtually everyone knows it. The opera ends with the blinded Samson shorn of his power giving locks, praying to God for one more chance.
The Philistines are having a great time celebrating their victory over Samson. Following the famous Bacchanal Samson enters led by a boy. He is ridiculed by the High Priest and the crowd. Dalila taunts Samson further by recounting to him the details of her devious plot in a variant of her love song. When the priests try to force him to kneel before Dagon, he asks the boy to lead him to the two main pillars of the temple, then telling the child to flee. Samson prays to God to restore his strength, and pushes down the pillars and the temple with them, crushing himself and his enemies.
There’s no exact number of Philistines buried by Samson’s anti-architectural feat, because I don’t know the capacity of the Temple of Dagon. But it was a lot.
Death and opera are as linked as bacon and eggs. The subject of this short series of articles is wholesale death – death that kills not only the principals, but the supers as well. This grim occurrence often gets the composer’s best effort, which is my excuse for presenting it.
I’ll start with Meyerbeer. He was the most popular composer of operas in the 19th century. Beginning in the early 20th century, his works fell out of favor, overwhelmed by those of Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini. Though they never completely vanished, their appearance was rare to almost invisible.
One reason they were not performed was that they required extensive resources to stage, as well as a posse of great voices. Also, tastes change, and Meyerbeer seemed old-fashioned and overblown. But the taste cycle is always in motion, and Meyerbeer once again seems attractive despite the paucity of great voices up to the task he set for his principals. Also important is that at his best he is very good.
The two operas discussed here are his two best – Les Huguenots and Le Prophète. Both deal with religious themes, and both end badly for lots of people. Eugène Scribe, who turned out librettos and “well-made” plays like drops in a thunderstorm, wrote the book for both operas. The plots of these archetypal French Grand Operas are very complex. I’ll just summarize their conclusions, which end in carnage.
Les Huguenots took five years to construct. Meyerbeer, who was independently wealthy, could take his time to get things exactly as he wanted. The opera is about the events leading to the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572, when thousands of French Protestants (Huguenots) were massacred by their Catholic compatriots. The event is historical; the characters and their interactions were invented by Scribe.
The opera was a triumph at its premiere at the Paris Opéra. It was the first work to receive 1000 performances at the Opéra. Yet between 1936 to 2018 it went unperformed by the Opéra. Berlioz called the score a “musical encyclopedia”. The Met has done the opera 129 times, but the last performance there was in 1915. If the company could find a proper cast, it seems time for a revival.
The opera ends with Protestant Raoul (tenor) and his Catholic lover together in a church. She knows of the planned massacre of all the Protestants led by her father, St Bris, and abjures her Catholic faith to share Raoul’s religion. Everyone is murdered. As Valentine dies, St Bris discovers that he has killed his own daughter. If this sounds like the end of Halévy’s La Juive (1835), it’s because it is the same – father discovers he’s killed his daughter. Luther’s hymn “Ein feste Burg” is a motif frequently used in the opera. For a synopsis of the story and more, go here.
Le Prophète (1849) was his next French Grand Opera. It is based on the life of John of Leiden, the Anabaptist leader and “King of Münster”. Scribe was again the librettist. The opera is in five acts, as was standard for the Opéra. It was another colossal success for Meyerbeer. Berlioz was again very impressed by Meyerbeer’s skill and invention.
His dominant position in French opera, combined with his Judaism, bred envy and resentment. Wagner was particularly hateful toward Meyerbeer, verging on maniacal anti-Semitism. This behavior was manifest only after Wagner had established himself as a composer. Meyerbeer had helped Wagner early in his career to such an extent that he wrote that without Meyerbeer ‘My wife and I would have starved in Paris’. And Meyerbeer continued his support; he recommended Rienzi to Dresden, and in 1841 he recommended The Flying Dutchman to Berlin.
The complex libretto is filled with ambiguity and darkness. There is no conventional love story; rather, the two protagonists are John and his mother, Fidès. The opera ends in the great hall of the Münster palace. John knows that Imperial troops are approaching and that he will be killed. He has the doors to the hall sealed after his enemies have entered. A huge explosion is triggered, and flames cause the palace to collapse, killing everyone. Sounds like a Wagner opera you may know. I’ll come to that one in a subsequent post.
As I mentioned above, Meyerbeer’s operas are big and require many fine singers. But these characteristics are true for Verdi’s Don Carlos and Aida. The same applies to many of Wagner’s operas. Yet they are regularly staged at both large and smaller houses. Meyerbeer’s turn may be coming around again.
The Metropolitan Opera has announced the operas that will be telecast next season. They are listed below. For further details about the telecasts and the upcoming season, please visit this link.
A few comments about these shows. Two Bellini operas out of a total of eight is an oddity. The first of these will mark the Met debut of Spanish tenor Xabier Anduaga. He has caused a stir because of the beauty of his lyric tenor. The young (b 1995) singer has evoked comparisons to Giuseppe Di Stefano, Alfredo Kraus, and Luciano Pavarotti. He will be joined by Nadine Sierra as the somnambulist.
La Bohème will have no cast, conductor, or orchestra as it has been done so often that the house can perform it on its own.
Andrea Chénier needs a solid spinto or dramatic tenor on the order of Mario Del Monaco, Richard Tucker, or Franco Corelli. Unfortunately, the Met has nobody at their level of excellence and will present Piotr Beczała in the title role. He is a lyric tenor, not up to spinto roles, as his weak appearance as Radames the season showed. He’s also near the end of his career.
Tristan und Isolde is a daunting test for both soprano and tenor. Soprano Lise Davidsen, who just added motherhood (twins) to her roles, should be a fine Isolde. She’s scheduled for Brunhilde in the Met’s Ring Cycle in the 26-27 season. Tenor Michael Spyres, who has the weirdest repertoire in operatic history, could be great or awful as Tristan. Die Zeit wird es zeigen.
*2025-26 Season
Vincenzo Bellini
La Sonnambula*
Live Performance
Sat, Oct 18, 2025 1:00 PM ET
Giacomo Puccini
La Bohème
Live Performance
Sat, Nov 08, 2025 1:00 PM ET
Richard Strauss
Arabella
Live Performance
Sat, Nov 22, 2025 1:00 PM ET
Umberto Giordano
Andrea Chénier
Live Performance
Sat, Dec 13, 2025 1:00 PM ET
Vincenzo Bellini
I Puritani
Live Performance
Sat, Jan 10, 2026 1:00 PM ET
Richard Wagner
Tristan und Isolde
Live Performance
Sat, Mar 21, 2026 12:00 PM ET
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Eugene Onegin
Sat, May 02, 2026 1:00 PM ET
Gabriela Lena Frank / Libretto by Nilo Cruz
El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego
Live Performance
Sat, May 30, 2026 1:00 PM ET
Rossini is life. Nowhere is this vitality as evident as in his Barber. The 24 year old composer was already a veteran when he composed his paen to mirth and human folly. Bart Sher’s production dates back to 2006, but still works.
The Barber is so good that it can survive almost anything thrown at it by good, bad, or delusional opera companies. I’ve seen it done in English as well as the original Italian. I’ve seen it done at the Met more times than I can remember. I’ve even seen it done in a high school Gymnasium. It always worked.
Today’s show had the benefit of a first-rate cast and conductor. Maestro Giacomo Sagripanti made his Met debut in this season’s run of Rossini’s perennial. He led a nimble and spirited performance. His support of the singers seemed effortless.
The title character, Figaro, gets what is likely the greatest entrance aria in opera – ‘Largo al factotum’. Moldovan baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky gave a bravura reading of the famous number, which everyone has heard away from the opera house. Apparently, he was too busy shaving everyone in Seville and being the city’s number one handyman to shave himself as he had at least a week’s worth of stubble . His acting was vigorous and apposite.
Tenor Jack Swanson made his Met debut as Count Almaviva this season. The American lyric tenor has specialized in the operas of Rossini. He has a light voice, which seemed dry and somewhat underpowered in ‘Ecco, ridente’, especially compared to the powerful baritone of Joseph Lim, who sang Fiorello. The latter seems ready for bigger parts.
Swanson’s voice became fuller as the opera progressed. He does not have a lush sound, but his singing is nimble, and he negotiated Rossini’s complex vocal line with ease. His high notes were well-placed. His singing of ‘Cessa di più resistere’ was first-rate. He’s a tall and strong young man who easily carried his leading lady across the stage. No mean feat as she is no string bean.
A note about this aria. Up until recently, it was omitted. The modern advent of virtuoso Rossini tenors like Juan Diego Flórez restored it. It’s a fine display piece that grips the audience if sung by a tenor who can meet its demands as did Swanson. But it messes up the opera’s conclusion as the action stops for a recital piece that has little to do with the story. Nevertheless, it seems likely to be back for good.
Rosina was written for a contralto. There are so few around that it’s typically done by a mezzo. It used to be frequently performed by coloratura sopranos transposed up. Aigul Akhmetshina, who made a big impression as Carmen last season, was a revelation as the story’s love interest. She has a big, beautiful, and agile voice that handled Rossini runs and roulades with ease. Her voice is rich and lush. She even threw in a high C. ‘Una voce poco fa’ was splendid, as was singing in the lesson scene and the ensemble parts. Still under 30 she is an artist on the rise.
Dr Bartolo is one of opera’s greatest comic roles. Hungarian bass-baritone Peter Kálmán played the role mostly straight. His singing was spot on. ‘A un dottor della mia sorte’ was effective. If you saw Fernando Corena in the role, you’ll recall that a great basso buffo can steal the opera no matter how great the rest of the cast.
The only problem I found with the performance was Don Basilio. Alexander Vinogradov looked more like an accountant than the smarmy, covetous priest that he is. Vocally he was fine. Chaliapin’s portrayal of Don Basilio as a “vulgar, unctuous, greasy priest, constantly picking his nose and wiping his fingers onto his cassock,” is the ideal – if disturbing – depiction of Basilio.
Jay Dunn made his Met debut this season as Ambrogio. The role is a non-singing one. The character speaks just a couple of words and yawns a lot. Dunn played him as a terminally old man about to disintegrate before the curtain falls, except this production eschews a curtain. His mostly silent character added to the opera’s aura of insanity
The maid Berta gets a big aria in Act 2. The young American soprano Kathleen O’Mara did a fine job with ‘Il vecchiotto cerca moglie’.
Video director Gary Halvorson was again restrained with his close-ups. The show was an outstanding presentation of Rossini’s sublime and wacky comedy. Definitely worth a trip to the theater for the encore presentation next week if you missed today’s telecast..
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Figaro……….Andrey Zhilikhovsky
Rosina……….Aigul Akhmetshina
Count Almaviva……….Jack Swanson
Dr. Bartolo……….Peter Kálmán
Don Basilio……….Alexander Vinogradov
Berta……….Kathleen O’Mara
Fiorello……….Joseph Lim
Sergeant……….Jonghyun Park
Ambrogio……….Jay Dunn
Conductor………. Giacomo Sagripanti
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson
The Met’s new production of Strauss’s Mach 2 one-act opera was telecast today. Director Claus Guth, who made his Met debut in this production, placed the location in a dark building in some hard to place time. It certainly wasn’t biblical Galilee or Perea.
Before I get to the performance, a word about inflation. Up to 1958, a one-act opera was not considered sufficient for an evening at the Met. Salome was paired with another one-acter, typically Gianni Schicchi or occasionally with a ballet. Starting in 1962, the price of a ticket went up, and Salome was the only work on the bill. The combination of Schicchi and Salome must have set all-time records for cognitive dissonance.
Back to today’s show. Guth’s conceit was to explain Salome’s murderous sexuality by depicting her as the victim of sexual abuse from her childhood to the present. The Freudian feat was accomplished by adding six additional Salomes to the cast at ages from early childhood to maturity. I don’t think her behavior needs an explanation. She is what she is – a wacked out teenager.
Strauss built his opera on a German translation of Oscar Wilde’s play, written in French. He then cut about half of the text, focusing on the elements he felt critical to his opera. He felt no need to explain Salome’s motivation. His music here and in his next opera, Elektra, pushes the boundary of audience acceptance to ambiguous tonality and dissonance to the limit. It is no wonder that he followed these two with Der Rosenkavalier.
There were a lot of extraneous events cluttering the show. Herod entered wearing a goat’s head. There were other people wearing animal heads. I don’t know who they were or why they wore them. There was a young woman wearing a bra and panties who was held aloft at the back of the stage Apparently, she was nude during the non-televised performances. There were projections that were in keeping with Herod’s delusional thinking.
None of Guth’s conceits was disqualifying except for one. There was no ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’. Each of the young Salomes appeared during the music, acting out the various stages of abuse Salome was said to have endured. The last killed the abuser who, like Herod, was wearing a Goat head, presumably identifying Herod as the culprit. This gimmick relieved Salome of having to dance. She also didn’t die after Herod ordered he execution, she just walked to the back of the stage.
Guth’s directorial wandering did not detract much from the performance because the cast was so good. The title role is one of the most demanding in all of opera. Elza van den Heever’s singing was triumphant. She has all the notes with much in reserve. Some observers mentioned that her lowest notes were not quite up to the standard of the rest of her range. I noticed no problem with the totality of her range. She also acted the role convincingly – a feat for a large woman in her mid-forties playing a 16-year-old.
The subject of Salome’s perverse desire, Jochanaan (John the Baptist), was well played by Peter Mattei. He was coated in white powder and tethered by a long chain. He seemed tempted to yield to Salome’s advances, using all his devout willpower to resist her erotic advances. All that he lacked was a little darker sound.
Herod is one of the great character tenor roles in the repertory. Gerhard Siegel was quite effective as the slimy Tetrarch. A little more oiliness would have added to his portrayal. He seemed to be suffering from angina as the action proceeded, clutching his chest whenever agitated. This likely explains his collapse at the final curtain. He dies of a heart attack.
Piotr Buszewski was convincing as the love-struck Narraboth. It’s hard to say whether his death was accidental or suicidal. He was impaled on a piece of metal held by Salome. This ambiguity is a directorial error. Naraboth’s death by suicide just from watching Salome’s lewd advances to Jochanaan is in keeping with Wilde’s florid symbolism.
Michelle DeYoung had little to do but discourage and then encourage Salome. Her red gown and headdress seemed out of place with the black and white theme that characterized the rest of the action. Vocally she was fine. The rest of the cast was all first rate.
This leaves the orchestra. It’s as important as Salome. The Met’s band played with consummate virtuosity. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting, while quite good, was a bit on the languid side. This was most apparent in the piece for the five Jews. Strauss’s setting of a religious dispute is one of opera’s miracles. Nézet-Sequin’s pace was too slow to realize the brilliance Strauss put into the piece.
Gary Halvorson’s video direction was unobtrusive, which means it was good. When you don’t notice the video direction, it’s done the right way.
In summary, the extraordinary performance by Elza van den Heever warrants a trip to the encore performance if you missed today’s telecast. The rest of the cast gave her exemplary support.
Salome
Richard Strauss | Oscar Wilde
Salome……….Elza van den Heever
Herod……….Gerhard Siegel
Herodias……….Michelle DeYoung
Jochanaan……….Peter Mattei
Narraboth……….Piotr Buszewski
Page……….Tamara Mumford
Jew……….Bille Bruley
Jew……….Thomas Capobianco
Jew……….Alex Boyer
Jew……….Bernard Holcomb
Jew……….Robert Pomakov
Nazarene……….Le Bu
Nazarene……….Yeongtaek Yang
Soldier……….Harold Wilson
Soldier……….Richard Bernstein
Cappadocian……….Jeongcheol Cha
Slave……….Scott Scully
Child Salome……….Manon Fleur Antonio
Child Salome……….Kate Lellos Doherty
Child Salome……….Hardy
Child Salome……….Vienna Judith Martinez
Child Salome……….Willow McConnaughy
Child Salome……….Louisa Pancoast
Herod’s Double……….Devin Richey
Conductor……….Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production……….Claus Guth
Set Designer……….Etienne Pluss
Costume Designer……….Ursula Kudrna
Lighting Designer……….Olaf Freese
Projection Designer……….rocafilm
Projection Designer……….Roland Horvath
Choreographer……….Somme Ulrickson
Dramaturg……….Yvonne Gebauer
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson
The subject is operas with prisons or prisoners as part, or all, of their story. I’ve got a dozen of them here. There are more, but 12 are enough. They’re not in chronological order, but rather as seems logical to me.
The ultimate prison opera is of course Beethoven’s Fidelio. The entire work take place in “A Spanish state prison, a few miles from Seville.” It is an example of the “rescue opera” popular around the turn of the 19th century and the only one to survive as part of today’s standard operatic repertory.
Anything by Beethoven is of great interest, but opera was not his forte. He struggled with his only opera for a decade constantly revising it. It remains a flawed opera with both arid passages and moments of inspiration. The prisoners chorus (O welche Lust—”O what a joy”) is their expression of joy at being given a moment of fresh air and sunlight.
Florestan had been unjustly imprisoned by Pizarro a rival nobleman. His wife Leonore disguised as Fidelio infiltrates the prison and eventually frees him to the delight of all save the evil Pizarro. At the start of Act 2 Florestan, alone in his cell, sings of his wretched state in the darkness and then has a vision of his wife coming to save him. The aria, indeed the whole opera, focuses on two of Beethoven’s favorite themes – conjugal love (he was a lifetime bachelor) and freedom. (Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!—”God! What darkness here”). The aria is very difficult as is most of Beethoven’s writing for voice. The tessitura is challenging and the aria is centered in the most difficult part of the tenor range. The singer is Jonas Kaufmann who gives a perfect reading of the thrilling but awkwardly placed aria.
Verdi’s Il Trovatore concludes in a dungeon. Manrico and Azucena have been captured and are awaiting Manrico’s execution by the Count di Luna who may or may not be his brother. Azucena threw a baby into her mother’s funeral pyre. Supposedly, the baby was the younger brother of the Count. Azucena is so mentally messed up that she may have thrown the wrong baby, hers, into the flames.
Manrico attempts to soothe Azucena, whose mind wanders to happier days in the mountains (‘Ai nostri monti ritorneremo‘ / ‘Again to our mountains we shall return’). The singers are Fedora Barbieri and Jussi Björling.
Verdi’s Don Carlo has a prison scene. It’s Act 3 scene 2 of the 1883 revised opera in Italian. It started life as a five act French grand opera – Don Carlos. Don Carlo has been imprisoned by his father King Philip II. Rodrigo visits him in jail. While he describes how he saved Carlo from execution by allowing himself to be incriminated by politically sensitive documents he is shot by agents of the Grand Inquisitor who demanded and received permission to assassinate Rodrigo in exchange for clerical approval for the king to kill his own son – Carlo. Rodrigo dies to the most beautiful music written for a soon to be ex-baritone. Ettore Bastianini and Flaviano Labò are Rodrigo and Carlo, respectively.
Two operas on the Faust story have prisons scenes. Gounod’s Faust was once the most popular opera in the world. It was performed so often in New York that the Met was dubbed the Faustspielhaus. It popularity has waned, but it’s still regularly performed.
The opera’s final scene is in a prison where Marguerite is being held for killing her child. Faust offers to rescue her from but she prefers to trust her fate to God and His angels. She asks why Faust’s hands are covered in blood, pushes him away, and falls down dead. Méphistophélès curses her, but a chorus of angels declares her salvation and her soul rises to heaven. Nicolai Gedda is Faust, Boris Christoff is Méphistophélès, Victoria de los Angeles is the abused Marguerite.
Boito’s Mefistofele is the second Faust opera presented here. After Gounod’s, it’s the most often performed of those based on the Faust story. In Act 3 Margareta is in a cell for poisoning her mother. She gave her a sleeping draught supplied by Faust. She also drowned their baby. She’s overjoyed at seeing Faust again, but horrified by the appearance of Mefistofele. She prays for divine forgiveness. She dies as a celestial choir grants her prayer. The devil hurries Faust away. The singers are Renata Tebaldi, Mario Del Monaco, and Cesare Siepi.
Johann Strauss Jr’s operetta Die Fledermaus (The Bat) was derived from a farce called Das Gefängnis (The Prison). Gabriel von Eisenstein, a Viennese man-about-town, has been sentenced to eight days in prison for insulting an official. He doesn’t get there until Act 3, the entirety of which takes place in a jail. The plot details are very complicated, but all gets sorted out by the Act 3 and the operetta’s end. The jailer Frosch is typically played by a non-singing comedian.
The work was a big hit at its premiere in 1874 and has remained so ever since. Even the staid Met has done it 233 times, which ranks 39th in frequency of operas performed by the company.
The ‘Champagne Song’ ends Act 2. Its reprised at the operetta’s conclusion. Herbert von Karajan conducts a cast headed by Elisabeth Schwarzkof and Nicolai Gedda.
Bizet’s Carmen is based on a novella by Prosper Mérimée. Don José is a Basque nobleman hence the title Don. In the opera José is a corporal making Don inappropriate. But it’s an opera, so who cares? Bizet’s Carmen and José are much less nasty than in the novella. There’s a prison scene in Mérimée’s story. In the opera José is in prison between Acts 1 and 2. He was punished for letting Carmen escape at the end of Act 1.
In his Flower Song in Act 2, José recounts how he kept the flower with him in his cell and how he thought only of her during his incarceration. The tenor is the 61 year old Richard Tucker – from a live performance in 1974.
The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut is a novel by Antoine François Prévost. Most commonly referred to as simply Manon Lescaut, the novel is a tragic love story about a nobleman (known only as the Chevalier des Grieux) and a common woman (Manon Lescaut). Defying conventional morality, they run away together and commit an escalating series of crimes to fund a lifestyle of pleasure. The narrative is presented as a long speech by des Grieux nine months after Manon’s death, and is often interrupted by his retrospective emotions. The novel is regarded as a classic, and is the most reprinted novel in French literature, with over 250 editions. [From Wikipedia]
The novel has been the source of at least three operas. Manon by Massenet and Manon Lescaut by Puccini are part of the core of the standard operatic repertory. In both operas Manon goes to jail. In the Massenet she dies on the road to Le Havre. Puccini finishes her off on “A desert plain on the borders of New Orleans.” Geography isn’t important in opera. In fairness to Puccini and his battalion of librettists, the English translation should be “A deserted plain…”
The death of Massenet’s Manon is sung by Victoria de los Angeles and Henri Legay.
Puccini’s Manon death scene is sung by Licia Albanese and Jussi Björling. The conductor is Jonel Perlea.
Act 3 of Puccini’s Tosca is set in atop Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo. Cavaradossi is led in by a jailer who tells him that he has one hour to live. He starts to write a letter to Tosca but is overcome by emotion. He then sings ‘E lucevan le stelle’ recalling his time with her and how he dies in desperation. Franco Corelli sings the aria recorded live at London’s Royal Opera House during his house debut in 1955. His diminuendo and filatura on the word ‘disciogliea’ are spectacular. The conductor cuts short the applause, otherwise the audience would still be clapping.
Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chenier is his only opera to get into the standard repertory. But is a very good one. Hard to understand why he could never reach this level again. His Fedora is occasionally performed, but that’s it for this composer.
Act 4 of Chenier is set in the Saint-Lazare Prison in Paris. The eponymous poet is soon to meet the guillotine. Like many of its victims during the French Revolution, he’s not guilty of anything. His lover Maddalena di Coigny takes the place of a condemned noblewoman, and they go to face the guillotine joined in love. Their final duet is a barnburner. ‘Vicino a te’ is sung by Zinka Milanov and Richard Tucker.
Richard Strauss’s third opera and first success was Salome. The opera was so shocking that after one performance at the Met in 1907, it was withdrawn and didn’t reappear at the house until 1934. Salome wandering across the stage kissing the severed head of John the Baptist still has shock potential even in the jaded 21st century. The Baptist spends most of the opera imprisoned in a cistern. Brigit Nilsson definitively sings the opera’s final scene under the leadership of Georg Solti.
There are other operas that involve prisons and prisoners. Among these are Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero, Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, The Beggar’s Opera, and The Threepenny Opera.
The video below is an interview with Franco Corelli (1921-2003) made around 1990. It’s in Italian, but it has English subtitles. The interviewer is not the most facile; nevertheless, Corelli’s comments are very interesting. Besides being on the short list of the greatest tenors of the last century, he was a sensitive and intelligent commentator on the operatic world which he entered at the comparatively advanced age of 30.
He recounts the development of his career in some detail. He discusses at length his decision to make New York City his home. The preference for the city is reflected by the 369 performances he gave at the Met between 1961 and 1975. He did return to Italy for a few months every year, but New York was where he spent most of his time.
He mentions how he decided in 1975 to take some time off which eventually lengthened into full time retirement. Surprisingly he says that he never attended a performance at the Met after he stopped singing there and never even listened to a broadcast from the company. Though he did give an occasional masterclass, it was the vibrant cultural life of New York away from opera that attracted him.
There are many YouTube videos featuring Corelli. I thought this one was particularly interesting.
Mario Del Monaco (1915-1985) was the great Italian dramatic tenor of the last century. The dramatic tenor is a rare specimen. He is distinguished from the spinto tenor by the baritonal timbre of his sound combined with powerful high notes reaching to C5. It is the voice Verdi had in mind when he wrote Otello.
Del Monaco sang at every major opera throughout the world. His Met career lasted from 1950 to 1959. He left the company after a dispute with its manager Rudolph Bing. I have read Bing’s explanation for the separation, but not Del Monaco’s. My suspicion is that Del Monaco left because Bing wouldn’t pay him enough. Del Monaco was able to make many times more per performance than what the Met paid. At the time of his departure the Met said its top salary was $1,000 a performance.
He continued to sing with great effectiveness until 1975 when renal failure secondary to chronic glomerulonephrtis put him on dialysis ending his career. I heard him at the old Met in Norma, Ernani, and Otello (two times) – once with Milanov and the other performance with De Los Angeles as Desdemona. Leonard Warren was Iago both times.
His voice was powerful and cut through the auditorium like a heavy spear. He was a tenorial marvel. He was a very handsome man, but like many tenors he was short. YouTube has a number of videos of Del Monaco in recital and performance. They all show his unique voice and flamboyant performance style to great effect. I’ve assembled a few of them to illustrate his great voice.
The following video is complete performance of Verdi’s Otello given in Tokyo in 1959. The other principals are Gabriella Tucci and Tito Gobbi. Alberto Erede conducts. Otello was his most frequently performed role. He was the definitive Otello of his era. He was buried in his Otello costume.
Finally the final scene of Carmen from 1959 at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Del Monaco is joined with the great Russian mezzo Irina Arkhipova. It’s a language stew – Del Monaco sings in Italian and Arkhipova in Russian. Of course, Bizet wrote it in French.
Giuseppe Giacomini (1940-2021) was one of the greatest tenors active during the last 30 years of the 20th century. Despite the excellence of his singing, he never achieved the widespread fame accorded his exact contemporaries – Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. Nevertheless, his career was quite successful; he appeared at all the major opera houses, always to great acclaim. He achieved a full slate of honors and seemed to get better as he aged. Giacomini’s prizes and honors include the title Kammersänger of the Staatsoper in Wien, the Gold Viotti, the Giovanni Zenatello Prize, the CA Capelli Prize, the Gold Mascagni, and the Giovanni Martinelli Prize. He was also Commendatore of the Ordine di San Gregorio Magno, a Vatican order of knighthood.
I last heard him in Sicily about 25 years ago in an outdoor performance of Turandot at the Giardini Bellini outside of Catania. The two soprano leads were inferior, but he was terrific. Nessun Dorma drove the Sicilians to a frenzied demand for an encore which the conductor refused.
He gave 85 performances at the Met between 1976 and 1988. He continued to sing well into his 60s without losing effectiveness. Known to his friends and admirers as ‘Bepi’, he had a winning personality and was free of the flamboyance commonly associated with a star tenor. His gentle personality may have lessened his fame. I have heard that he left the Met when he was at the peak of his powers because the company wouldn’t let him sing Otello mostly limiting the role to Placido Domingo whose voice did not have the full dramatic weight as did Giacomini’s. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this rumor.
Giacomini’s voice was a full-fledged dramatic tenor with a free top. He could shade his sound to the appropriate level of the music he sang. He sang all the standard Italian roles to great effect. The following excerpts, in addition to the one linked above, show why his services were always in high demand.
Otello’s entrance lasts only about half a minute, but in this brief span Verdi depicts the gullible general’s character in a flourish of direct and heroic tones. Esultate. Giacomini’s baritonal sound and command of the passagio make for fine reading of this great entrance. It doesn’t take long for Otello to lose his grasp on reality and bemoan his future as a cuckold. Ora e per sempre addio. The thunderous duet that closes Act 2 depicts Iago’s manipulation of Otello to the point of uxoricide. Sherill Milnes is the baritone. Si pel ciel.
Sticking to Verdi, Giacomini belts out Manrico’s ‘Di quella pira’ though the high C sounds more like a B natural to me. Listeners with perfect pitch can confirm or deny my suspicion. Di quella pira. The tenor aria from La Forza del Destino is one of the finest anybody has ever written. Its recitative is better than most other composer’s arias. La vita e inferno. Giacomini’s performance of the aria is heroic.
Amilcare Pochielli’s only lasting opera is La Gioconda. The work’s most well-known aria is for the tenor. Cielo e mar starts Act 2. This recording, from a recital, shows Giacomini’s stentorian tones to great advantage.
Giacomini recorded Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with Jessye Norman as Santuzza. The role was one not typical of those usually sung by the soprano, but she acquits herself well on the recording. Ah! lo vedi is the duet during which Turridu forcible rejects Santuzza whose virtue he has compromised. Giacomini was the only Italian in the cast of this complete recording which nevertheless holds up quite well against its numerous competitors. The Brindisi (Drinking Song) comes just before Turridu is challenged to his fatal duel with the husband of the woman with whom he has been carrying on an illicit affair.
Another verismo composer known for only one opera (Andrea Chenier) was Umberto Giordano. Tenors love to sing the title role as he has four arias. The best known of these is the first act Improvviso which tests a spinto tenor to his limit. It’s hard to understand how a composer could write as good an opera as Chenier and not reach that level again. Giacomini’s rendition of the aria is one of the finest available.
Finally, Puccini. E lucevan le stelle require grace more than force. Giacomini gives a fine and sensitive performance of the ubiquitous aria. Or son sei mesi is in Act 2 of The Girl of the Golden West. It is noteworthy for the blaze of B-flats that come near its end. Ch’ella mi creda occurs in the opera’s last act. It’s the hero’s wish that his lover Minnie not be told that he was hanged. Of course, she arrives to free him using a pistol as a debating point. The two then ride off together into the sunrise (they’re in California). Giacomini’s singing here is splendid.
He was a great tenor who deserves more recognition than he has received though his standing among opera aficionados is already assured.
Puccini’s Tosca has been an audience favorite since its premiere in 1900. It has everything one could ask for in an opera: beautiful and dramatically apt music, a gripping story that wastes not a line or note, and one of opera’s most spectacular endings. Tosca, an operatic diva, jumps from the parapet of the Castel Sant’Angelo.
At the end of the previous act, she stabbed Scarpia the sadistic chief of police to death as he was about to rape her after which he promised free her lover Mario from execution. He told her that Mario would have to undergo a mock execution before the couple would be allowed to flee Rome.
The excerpts below all start just before Mario faces the firing squad which he knows is real, but which the gullible Tosca continues to believe is a sham – she’s an opera singer, not a logician. She tells Mario how to feign his death and is horrified to find him dead after the executioners have left. She then hears Scarpia’s henchmen rushing to the scene. They have found Scarpia’s body and are after Tosca. She rushes to the parapet crying ‘O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!’ (‘O Scarpia, we meet before God!’) and flings herself over the edge. The opera ends with a phrase from the tenor’s aria ‘E lucevan le stelle’ sung shortly after the start of the final act. Some critics have thought this ending inappropriate thinking the music applies to him rather than the leaping soprano. I find it entirely apt as it really depicts the couple’s love.
The first example is taken from the definitive recording of the opera. Even though more than 70 years have passed since it was made, none of the many complete recordings of Tosca can touch it. The only opera recording made by the great conductor Victor de Sabata, its trio of star performers set a standard yet to be equaled. Tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano and baritone Tito Gobbi are not heard in this excerpt.
Maria Callas was likely the greatest interpreter of Puccini’s doomed diva. She has everything needed for the role. Her singing and dramatic instincts realized every nuance of Puccini’s masterpiece. De Sabata’s conducting is sharp and propulsive. Even the gunshots from the firing squad sound better on this recording than on any of the many that have followed it over the decades. Callas Tosca finale
Renata Tebaldi was almost as famous as Callas during their contemporaneous careers. A fault with this and most of the recordings of the final scene is that Toaca’s admonitions to Mario just prior to his execution are recorded at a slightly low volume. The conductor is Alberto Erede. Tebaldi Tosca finale
Birgit Nilsson was best known for her Wagner and Strauss roles. But she often sang Italian opera, in addition to Turandot which she sang more frequently than any other role. Her end to Tosca still reverberates. Lorin Maazel is the conductor on this excerpt. Nilsson Tosca finale
Mirella Freni was born in Modena the same year (1935) as Luciano Pavarotti. They shared the same wet nurse and were childhood friends. She never sang Tosca onstage – her recording of the complete opera was her only connection to this work. Nicola Rescigno conducts. Freni Tosca finale
Katia Riccarelli was one of the leading Italian sopranos of the last quarter of the 20th century. Her recording of Tosca was made under the direction of Herbert von Karajan. Riccarelli Tosca finale
Karajan was also the conductor when Leontyne Price recorded the opera. Tosca was a regular part of her repertoire at the Met where she starred for more than 20 years. Leontyne Price Tosca finale
Angela Gheorghiu, a Romanian soprano, has had Tosca at the center of her roles. In February 2022, Gheorghiu celebrated her 30th anniversary with the Royal Opera House, reprising Tosca under the direction of Anthony Pappano who is the conductor on this excerpt. Gheorghiu Tosca finale
So well constructed and popular is Tosca that Puccini’s leaping lover will continue to dive off the ancient Roman castle for as long as opera endures.
America had a profusion of baritones in the 20th century. One of the most prominent then is much less so today. He’s the subject of this article. John Charles Thomas (1891-1960) was born in Meyersdale, PA. He was interested in singing from an early age. From 1910 to 1912 he studied voice at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute. After touring briefly with a musical troupe he settled in New York.
After appearing with a Gilbert and Sullivan company, he was hired by the Shubert Brothers to appear in the Broadway show The Peasant Girl. For the next decade, he appeared in a succession of hit musicals. His attention then turned to opera. First, he sang arias in recitals, and then in complete performances. He honed his operatic skills in Europe. By 1928 he was singing at the Royal Opera House, London in Faust alongside Feodor Chaliapin. Though he could make more money away from opera he persisted in this side of his career.
He was active as a recitalist, in movies, on the radio, and in operetta. His repertoire ranged from popular songs to musical comedy, art songs, Italian songs, lieder, and the standard operatic repertoire. In 1934 he made his Met debut as the elder Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata. He sang 55 performances with the company over the next nine years. This number would have been larger had he not been in great demand in so many different kinds of venues. During the 30s and 40s, he was one of the most popular entertainers in the US.
Thomas’s voice was bright. resonant, and had a very easy top. His years on Broadway had given him great skill in selling what he was singing. The following selections should convince the listener unfamiliar with his work that he belongs among the top group of American baritones active during the last century – a very distinguished cadre.
Home on the Range was a song often performed by Thomas. This recording is from a radio broadcast. He adjusts his very big voice to a size ideal for the song. He turns the familiar tune into a moving experience.
Three popular American show tunes show his facility with this genre. Ol’ man river by Jerome Kerns, The last time I saw Paris also by Kerns (both with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein), and Oh, what a beautiful mornin’, by Richard Rogers again with words by Hammerstein are sung to great effect in a style appropriate for the music. Notice Thomas’s impeccable diction.
In questa tomba oscura is a song by Beethoven. He wrote it for a competition in 1807. Not surprisingly, it’s the only one from that competition that has endured.
Next selections from operettas. Thomas started his career, mentioned above, doing Gilbert and Sullivan. When I was lad is from HMS Pinafore. His rendition is perfect and shows the extraordinary versatility this exceptional artist possessed. The Gypsy Baron is one of Johan Strauss’s most successful efforts for the operetta stage. The open road is sung with zest and elan. The voice is as good as a baritone can produce.
Now on to opera. First Thomas sings Thomas – Ambroise Thomas. The Drinking Song from Hamlet is the opera’s best known piece.
Thomas Met debut was greeted with rave reviews. Di provenza il mar is from Traviata’s second act. Rossini’s Barber was a regular part of Thomas’s repertoire. His version of Largo al factotum is full of verve. Iago’s Credo from Verdi’s Otello is cloaked in menace. Nemico della patria from Giordano’s Andrea Chénier is completely realized. Leoncavallo’s Zazà was done at the Met as a vehicle for Geraldine Ferrar. When she left the company so did the opera which hasn’t been done since. Ironically the work’s best known aria is the baritone’s Zazà, piccola zingara.
Thomas clearly belongs in the pantheon of great American baritones. His versatility is unmatched by any American singer I can think of. Why we turn out so many first-rate baritones compared to tenors is as mysterious as it is true.
Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tézier recorded nine tenor-baritone duets, released on a Sony Classics disc in June 2022. Insieme translates from Italian as together. The two singers are friends who have often performed together hence the title. The master of the tenor-baritone duet was Verdi. Accordingly, seven of the selections are by him.
The CD starts with the Act 4 duet from La bohème between Rodolfo and Marcello; it’s the only such duet Puccini ever wrote. He was much more interested in the interactions of his sopranos and tenors. The two men bemoan the sad state of their love life.
The second duet is from the first act of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. The villainous Barnaba, a precursor to Iago, ostensibly offers to help the tenor, Enzo Grimaldo, elope with the wife of one of Venice’s inquisitors. When Enzo leaves Barnaba denounces him to the Inquisition.
The remaining seven duets are from Les vêpres siciliennes (2), Don Carlos, La forza del destino (3), and Otello. The Otello excerpt starts from ‘Ora per sempre addio’ and moves to ‘Era la notte’, concluding with the blood oath duet.
The level of performance is very high though some of the sheen has worn off from Kaufmann’s voice – he’s now on the downside of 50. When he sings in full voice the sound is not as rich as it was before the vocal crisis he had from a bleeding vein on one of his vocal chords in 2016. He also tends to shade his dynamic range more than is necessary. He’s very good at modulating his dynamics but does it more often than the music requires or than he did earlier in his career. Sometimes he gets close to crooning. See the example below.
Tézier has a beefy baritone which he uses to great effect. Though not as big a star as Kaufmann he’s good enough to add distinction to any performance in which he appears.
Antonio Pappano conducted the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome. His conducting was idiomatic and sensitive. He’s a maestro who is always aware and responsive to the singers’ needs.
Who is this disc for? If you’re a fan of Kaufmann’s singing you’ll likely want this recital. Also, it’s nice to have the great Verdi tenor-baritone duets available in one place. If you subscribe to a music streaming site like Spotify listening to this program is a no-brainer.
I wrote above that I thought Kaufmann was overusing his admitted skill at piano singing. This is mostly a matter of taste, but here’s Kaufmann singing ‘Che gelida manina’ from a 2021 performance. It’s followed by Giuseppe Di Stefano’s 1951 recording of the same aria. Di Stefano was a master of piano singing. I think Di Stefano’s soft singing is seamless and better integrated into the flow of the music. Listen to both and see if you find a meaningful difference between the two interpretations and if you agree or not with my criticism.
Kaufmann Che gelida manina
Di Stefano Che gelida manina
Verdi’s Macbeth was his 10th opera. It was his favorite of these 10 and the first of his three operas based on Shakespeare’s plays. It is clearly the masterpiece of his pre-Rigoletto works. The tenor role of Macduff is a minor part; he has little to do except sing the great aria that is the subject of this piece.
Verdi knew that the opera could never attract a star tenor, because of the brevity of the role, who could fully realize the beautiful aria he had created and said it would not make the great effect it should without a leading tenor. That problem still plagues the aria when it is part of a staged performance. On recordings, however, it is frequently sung by a leading tenor. An exception to this practice was the first run of the opera at the Met in 1959. The young Carlo Bergonzi sang Macduff.
The aria is Macduff’s lament over the murder by the Macbeths of his wife and children while he was in hiding. He vows revenge. Below are 12 recordings of the aria. The Italian text followed by an English translation is at the end of the article.
Enrico Caruso recorded the aria in 1916. His version is particularly good. His rich voice and dynamic shading realize the emotion contained in the number. It’s music that calls for finesse rather than tenorial athleticism. Caruso Ah, la paterna mano
As I mentioned above Carlo Bergonzi was the first Macduff at the Met. This recording is taken from a 1959 Met performance. The tenor was a Verdi specialist. His rendition is very good though it would get even better over the ensuing years. Bergonzi Ah, la paterna mano
Jose Carreras had one of the most beautiful lyric tenor voices of the last century until overuse and acute leukemia (from which he recovered after a bone marrow transplant) lessened his vocal power. His singing of the aria is very good. Carreras Ah, la paterna mano
Franco Corelli needs no introduction. He was one of the last century’s greatest tenors. His singing here is sensitive especially coming from a very big voice. Corelli Ah, la paterna mano
Dimitri Pittas is a lyric tenor who started out as if there was no limit to how high he could go. But while he sang at many of the world’s leading houses including the Met, his career was not what I thought he might achieve. I heard him as Nemorino in Santa Fe about 15 years ago. He was first-rate. He was Macduff in the Met’s 2008 telecast of Macbeth. Between 2005 and 2016 he sang 64 times with the company in both leading and secondary roles. He currently teaches in New York and is the Artistic Director of a company in Charleston SC. Pittas Ah, la paterna mano
Placido Domingo has recorded everything including the 1982 Mexico City telephone directory. His singing of the aria is at the highest level as expected. Domingo Ah, la paterna mano
Giuseppe Filianoti started his career as if the opera world were in his breast pocket. But after a few years, he was singing secondary roles. His website lists no performances after 2018. He did appear at the Met in 2019 in Macbeth but as Malcolm. In 2022 he was Don Basilio In Le Nozze di Figaro. His singing of the aria is from the start of his career and is very well done. Filianoti Ah, la paterna mano
The great Australian tenor Donald Smith was the subject of a previous article here. He was an outstanding singer who is not better known outside of his native country because he preferred to stay home rather than travel the world. All the major companies, including the Met, sought unsuccessfully to hire him. Smith Ah, la paterna mano
Jonas Kaufmann has been the world’s leading tenor for the past dozen years. He sings a wide variety of Italian, French, and German roles. His full throated yet nuanced reading is very effective. Kaufmann Ah, la paterna mano
Mario Del Monaco was a full fledged dramatic tenor. He was the definitive Otello of his era. This performance taken from a 1969 concert in Tokyo was relatively late in his career. Nevertheless, the huge voice is still intact. Del Monaco Ah, la paterna mano
Luciano Pavarotti would never have sung Macduff in a full performance. But as a recital piece, the aria fits his voice perfectly. Pavarotti Ah, la paterna mano
Salvatore Fisichella is a Sicilian tenor who now devotes his time to teaching. He had a superb voice that was especially noted for its acuti. Fisichella was a wonderful singer who for some opaque reason sang only five performances at the Met. Originally known as a bel canto tenor he added larger roles as his career progressed. His voice remained intact well into his 60s. This excerpt includes the duet with Malcolm and the chorus that follows the aria. Fisichella Ah, la paterna mano
MACDUFF:
O figli, o figli miei! da quel tiranno
Tutti uccisi voi foste, e insieme con voi
La madre sventurata! Ah, fra gli artigli
Di quel tigre io lasciai la madre e i figli?
Ah, la paterna mano
Non vi fu scudo, o cari,
Dai perfidi sicari
Che a morte vi ferir!
E me fuggiasco, occulto,
Voi chiamavate invano,
Coll’ultimo singulto,
Coll’ultimo respir.
Trammi al tiranno in faccia,
Signore! e s’ei mi sfugge,
Possa a colui le braccia
Del tuo perdono aprir.
MACDUFF:
Oh, my children! You have all been killed
by that tyrant, together with
your poor mother! Ah, did I
leave a mother and her children in the clutches of that beast?
Alas, a father’s hand was not there
to shield you, my dear ones,
from the treacherous assassins
who put you to death.
And in vain you called on me,
a fugitive, in hiding,
with your last gasp,
with your last breath.
Lord, bring me face to face
with this tyrant, and if he escapes me
let your merciful arms
open to him.
The Dallas Opera is currently streaming a performance of Richard Strauss’s one-act opera Elektra from its last February run. The telecast will be available until the end of October. The full cast and video are below.
This opera is the composer’s deepest dive into modernism. It is commonly asserted that he backed off from the edge of the tonal abyss in his subsequent operas. I don’t think he did so out of any sense of apprehension but rather because he had gotten all he could from dissonance and fluid tonality. He had other musical fish to fry which he did quite successfully for about another decade. After that, he dried up only to find inspiration again in his late 70s and 80s when he wrote his Horn Concerto No. 2, Metamorphosen, his Oboe Concerto, the Duet concertino for clarinet and bassoon, and his Four Last Songs.
I’ve seen many productions of Elektra, this one as far as I can tell from a telecast is generally pedestrian. Most of the female participants seemed in dire need of semaglutide. A few could barely move. The singing was serviceable but without the heroic force needed to fully realize Strauss’s overwhelming score. Marjorie Owens’s voice is placed too much in her throat to make the sound required for the title role. Jill Grove was vocally effective as the sister who wanted out of the lethal family drama, though she was unable to do much acting because of her physique. Angela Meade played Chrysothemis as a grotesque who was madder than purple blood.
The entire production displayed a “palace” that was in fire need of a posse of Merry Maids so dusty, dirty, and rundown that an immediate cleanup was demanded. The best performance was from Alfred Walker as Orest, though he was afflicted by a second pair of eyebrows that gave him an aura of disfigurement. The recognition scene accordingly was the best in the show.
Elektra’s final dance to death was no more than a brief bit of swaying followed by collapse. Emmanuel Villaume’s conducting was from the anti-Pierre Monteux school – the conductor’s head was in the score rather than the score in his head.
If you’re not familiar with Strauss’s masterpiece you might want to give the show a free look before it vanishes. If you’ve seen and heard it many times you likely won’t get much from it. A provincial staging of a great work.
Conductor – Emmanuel Villaume
Original Director – Sir David McVicar
Revival Director – Nick Sandys
Original Set and Costume Designer – John Macfarlene
Original Lighting Designer – Jennifer Tipton
Wig and Make-Up Designer – David Zimmerman
Scenery constructed by Bay Productions Limited, Cardiff, Wales, U.K.
Costumes constructed by the San Francisco Opera Association.
Photo: Kyle Flubacker
Cast:
Elektra – Marjorie Owens
Klytämnestra – Jill Grove
Chrysothemis – Angela Meade
Orest – Alfred Walker
Aegisth – Clifton Forbis
The Overseer – Alexandra Loutsion
Tutor of Orest – Kyle Albertson
First Maidservant – Gretchen Krupp
Second Maidservant – Kristen Choi
Third Maidservant – Lindsay Kate Brown
Fourth Maidservant- Laura Wilde
Fifth Maidservant – Meghan Kasanders
The Confidant – Jocelyn Hansen
The Trainbearer – Carelle Flores
A Young Servant – Jordan Hammons
An Old Servant – Travis Wiley McGuire
Maidservant – Kristin Tallett Bittick
Maidservant – Dana Francis Goodnuff
Maidservant – Kristen Mata
Maidservant – Denise Stom
Maidservant – Avanti Dei
Maidservant – Stephanie Jennings
Conductor – Emmanuel Villaume
Original Director – Sir David McVicar
Revival Director – Nick Sandys
Original Set and Costume Designer – John Macfarlene
Original Lighting Designer – Jennifer Tipton
Wig and Make-Up Designer – David Zimmerman
Puccini’s second opera Edgar (accent on the second syllable) was first performed at La Scala in 1889. It was adapted from a verse play by Alfred de Musset. Set in 14th century Flanders it describes the contrast between the saintly and virginal Fidelia and the wildly sensual Tigrana. Not surprisingly Tigrana lights the passion fires of both the tenor (Edgar) and the baritone Frank. By the opera’s end, Fidelia is dead by Tigrana’s hand. Edgar and Frank who have reformed are devastated as are the people of the village in which they live. The story is not the tight well constructed plot that characterizes Puccini’s mature work. It’s a pulp fiction version of Wagner’s Tannhäuser.
The opera, originally in four acts, was unsuccessful and was revised several times. The last go at it was in 1905 in a three act version. Puccini then gave up on it. He wrote: It (Edgar) was an organism defective from the dramatic point of view. Its success was ephemeral. Although I knew that I wrote some pages which do me credit, that is not enough—as an opera it does not exist. The basis of an opera is the subject and its treatment. In setting the libretto of Edgar I have, with all respect to the memory of my friend Fontana (the librettist), made a blunder. It was more my fault than his.
The only place you’re likely to hear a complete performance of the work is at the annual summer Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago. The weakness of the work notwithstanding anything by Puccini is of interest. Though the opera lacks dramatic cohesion it has several lovely tunes. Puccini’s melodic gift was so great that he was incapable of writing anything devoid of melodic interest as the two excerpts below will demonstrate.
In Frank’s first act aria ‘Questo amor, vergogna mia‘ he expresses his shame over the passion he has for Tigrana. He rids himself of this guilty love before Edgar manages to purge himself of the same lust. Sensitively sung by Juan Pons it is the only lyrical set piece Puccini ever wrote for a baritone. There are dramatic and comical solos for this vocal type, but none like this one.
The prelude to Act 3 contains an amalgam of some of the best tunes in the opera. Edgar is an opera by a genius who has yet to fit all the pieces together in a work for the lyric stage. He got it right with his next Opera Manon Lescaut which marked the start of an operatic career surpassed only by that of Verdi. Nevertheless, If I happened to be near a performance of Edgar that featured first-rate singers, I would go as imperfect as it is, it’s better than anything written in the 21st century.
Giulietta Simionato (1910-2010) was one of the greatest singers of the middle of the last century. Born in Forlì, Romagna, she studied in Rovigo, and then in Padua. Though she made her stage debut in 1927 while still a teenager she gradually progressed up the ladder of Italian theaters until she made it to the biggest ladder of them all – La Scala in 1936. She remained with the company until 1966 the year of her retirement.
She achieved international renown during the years following World War II. She sang in all the world’s leading opera houses. She did not make her Met debut until 1959. San Francisco and Chicago had heard years before she first appeared in New York – another example of the Met’s mysterious mistakes. The New York critics were overwhelmed by the beauty, power, and dramatic impact of her singing. She only appeared 28 times with the Met – an incalculable loss to its audiences.
Her debut role at the Met was Azucena in Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Here’s what Winthrop Sargeant wrote in the New Yorker of her initial Met appearance: Giulietta Simionato [is] an Italian mezzo-soprano (the designation is scarcely adequate, for she combines a rich contralto range with the agility and scope of a dramatic soprano) who was new to the company and who sang the role of Azucena with a degree of authority, power, and musical taste that I have not heard approached in this part since the days of the great Bruna Castagna. Miss Simionato – a small, round-faced woman with an intense stage personality that matches her extraordinary vocal gifts – presented Azucena not as the dishevelled hag standardized by tradition but as a vital, individualized character, whose seething search for vengeance is tempered by human and feminine traits. And her vocal contribution was so flawless, so easy in production, and so mature in its skill as to make her role the center around which the evening revolved, creating frequently that element of electric excitement that is found only in the presence of the most formidable artists.
She sang all the great mezzo roles of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. But so great was her range and vocal comfort zone that she sang soprano roles as well. I heard her in performance only one time – as Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana in the year of her Met debut. She was beyond great. I’ve forgotten everything else about that performance and the accompanying Pagliacci save her searing portrayal of Mascagni’s seduced and forsaken Sicilian villager.
After her retirement, she married an Italian doctor. According to my Italian colleagues, she then spent all his money which caused them boundless mirth every time I mentioned her name. Below are a few examples of her artistry recorded both in performance and in the studio.
First two of the soprano roles that she sang with great distinction. Voi lo sapete, o mamma is Santuzza’s lament about Turiddu, her seducer who has abandoned her for a married woman. She makes her confession to his mother.
Simionato sang Valentine in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots at La Scala with a cast that included Joan Sutherland and Franco Corelli. Performed in Italian as Gli Ugonott Simionato is joined with Corelli in the great duet from Act IV.
Simionatto was personally very close to Maria Callas. In 1955 they appeared in Bellini’s Norma at La Scala. Pollione was Mario Del Monaco.The two women sing Mira, o Norma from Act 2. The demands of Bellini’s masterpiece are so great that the opera should only be staged when a company has artists at least close to the caliber of these two.
Rossini’s last Italian opera was Semiramide. Based on a play by Voltaire, it is infrequently performed. This dearth of staging is due to the demands placed on the mezzo-soprano and the bass. Both parts have extensive coloratura passages and coloratura mezzos and basses are as rare honor among politicians. No, non ti lascio is from Act 2. The soprano is Joan Sutherland. This opera is another one best left on the shelf unless a luminous cast is available. Another Rossini duet is Dunque io son from The Barber. The baritone is Ettore Bastianini. Donizetti was the third bel canto composer whose work was in Simionato’s repertoire. O mio Fernando is from the composer’s La Favorita (La Favorite in the original French).
Dalila’s ‘Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix’ from Act 2 of Saint-Saens Samson et Dalila is sung in Italian as S’Apre per te il mio cor. Simionato’s mastery of a style far removed from Italian opera is easily recognized.
Finally, here’s a knockout version of Amneris’s Judgement Scene from Verdi’s Aida. It’s so good that one might wish to change the name of the opera to Amneris.
Simionato was one of a small group of mezzo-sopranos who sat atop the opera world in the 20th century. There were even fewer who had the versatility that characterized her work. She was equally adept at bel canto opera, Verdi, and the French repertory. A very great artist.
Puccini’s first work for the stage was Le Villi (best translated as The Fairies). It is based on the same story as Adam’s ballet Giselle. Puccini’s opera, with dancing, takes little more than an hour. It is a slender work with only three characters – Gulielmo the head forester, Anna his daughter, and Roberto her fiance. Originally a one act opera Puccini revised it to two after its premiere in 1884. It was successful enough for Ricordi to publish its score and support Puccini until he had a hit – his third opera Manon Lescaut.
The story is pretty straightforward. Roberto and Anna are to be married, but he must leave to collect an inheritance. Anna worries that she’ll never see him again. He reassures her that all will be well. A siren enchants Roberto and he forgets about Anna. She waits through summer and autumn finally dying in winter of a broken heart. The legend of the fairies (Le Villi) is then explained. When a woman dies of a broken heart, the fairies force the heartbreaker to dance until death. Anna’s father holds Roberto responsible for his daughter’s death and asks the Villi to punish Roberto. Abandoned by the siren he bewails his fate and seeks forgiveness which is not granted and he dances himself to death.
The story is not one the mature composer would have chosen, but he was only 25 at the time of his first opera’s composition. Verdi was still the dominant force in Italian opera and had yet to compose his final two great operas. When you listen to this first attempt at the most difficult of art forms one is struck by a sound that even if not yet fully developed is original and unlike anything hitherto produced by an Italian composer. Ricordi obviously recognized this nascent talent and accordingly invested in it.
I’ll give two examples from the opera as proof of Puccini’s budding genius. To give more would approach playing the entire opera given its brevity. Both are from the second act. The first is the tenor aria Torna ai felici dì (Return to the happy days) in which Roberto mourns the loss of the days of his youth and his beloved Anna. The aria is frequently performed as a recital piece or on recordings. The one linked here is sung by the young Placido Domino who was at the peak of his great powers when the recording was made.
The second excerpt is the encounter between Anna’s spirit and Roberto. She tells him of the suffering that she had to endure. Roberto begs for forgiveness and he too feels the pain of Anna burning in his heart. But Roberto is not forgiven and Anna calls upon the Villi, who curse Roberto with cries of “traitor.” Then, the Villi and Anna dance with Roberto until he dies of exhaustion at Anna’s feet. You gotta feel sorry for Roberto. A siren enchanted him. There was no way he could return to Anna at the appointed time. But there’s no forgiveness in this story. The soprano in this recording taken from a staged French production of the opera is Melanie Diener the tenor is Aquiles Machado. Act 2 duet
Obviously, this maiden effort is not anywhere near the greatness that awaited Puccini in the 1890s and beyond. But given what he achieved anything by him merits attention. There are several complete recordings of the opera that are easily available. Anyone who appreciates Puccini’s unique talent should give one of them a listen.
John McCormack (1885-1945) was an Irish tenor active from about 1909 to the early 1940s. Born to Scottish parents who had emigrated to Ireland, his interest in singing began as a child. In 1903, he won the coveted gold medal of the Dublin Feis Ceoil. A friend of James Joyce, who was two years older than McCormack, he encouraged Joyce to enter the 1904 Feis Ceoli. Which the then unknown writer did winning a bronze medal.
In 1904 he moved to Italy to study voice under Vincenzo Sabatini the father of the famous novelist Rafael. During his stay in Italy, he became fluent in Italian. In 1906 he made his operatic debut at the Teatro Chiabrera in Savona. The following year he appeared at Covent Garden as Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana. For the next six or so years he was an Italian-style tenor. But beginning in 1912 he became increasingly interested in concert performances at the expense of operatic appearances. His 10 Met performances reflect this change in the focus of his career. Between 1910 and 1918 he appeared in three concerts and seven operas.
He made numerous recordings of arias only one of which reaches true excellence – his famous recording of Il mio tesoro from Don Giovanni. His exceptional breath control and facility with runs and ornamentations have made this recording a classic since its release over a century ago.
Less successful is his recording of Che gelida manina. His sound is a little thin for the aria and the high note near the end is forced and strained. Salut! Demeure chaste et pure from Gounod’s Faust is a little better done. It’s sung in Italian, as McCormack always did with the French operas he recorded. His phrasing is fine, but there’s a bit of unsteadiness in the tone. De’ miei bollenti spiriti from Traviata is well done, but nothing more. Caesar Franck’s Panis angelicus is an electrical recording made in 1927 when the tenor had completely abandoned opera. The music fits his voice to perfection, requiring style in the absence of vocal extremes.
It was as a concert artist that he achieved great fame. He was able to fill the 5,000 seat Hippodrome in New York for a concert. His records sold in the millions. He became a well-known figure on radio and appeared in films. His personal charm and charisma made concert venues ideal for his style of singing. He became an internationally known celebrity- and a very rich one.
Here are a few of the kinds of songs that marked the bulk of his career. They are sentiment, Irish, or patriotic for the most part. I Hear You Calling Me is a British song with music by Charles Marshall and lyrics by Harold Lake. It was a regular part of McCormack’s repertoire. It’s a Long Way to Tipperary is a British music hall song. It was used as a marching song by soldiers in World War I, though it was originally written as a lament from an Irish worker in London, missing his homeland.
The Wearing of the Green is an Irish street ballad lamenting the repression of supporters of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. It is set to an old Irish air, and many versions of the lyrics exist, the best known being by Dion Boucicault. It is Boucicault’s lyrics that McCormack sings. The Star of County Down is another Irish ballad. County Down is in Northern Ireland. Kathleen Mavourneen is a song written in 1837 and composed by Frederick Crouch. Despite its Irish subject, Crouch was an Englishman.
I think after listening to some of McCormack’s recordings that it’s clear he made the right decision to foreswear opera in favor of a lighter and more popular repertory. The music he sang during his prime years was perfectly suited to his voice. An artist of his time, he would have difficulty in finding a place in today’s musical environment.
The Casa di Riposo per Musicisti (Rest Home for Musicians) in Milan is almost always referred to as the Casa Verdi after the titan of opera who built and paid for it. Verdi’s operatic career was over; he was in his eighties when he decided to build a home for retired musicians. Working closely with the architect Camillo Boito, the brother of his last librettist Arrigo, he built a mansion designed to house musicians during the latter portion of their lives.
He wanted everything about the place to be first rate and it was and still is. When it was suggested that money could be saved by housing two retirees in a room instead of one he quickly rejected the suggestion saying that doing so would impinge on a resident’s dignity.
To fund the home he left it the royalties earned by his operas. They were considerable. He was the first composer to become wealthy as the consequence of the earnings of his music. Verdi made the pun of saying that his home for musicians was his finest opera. ‘Opera’ in Italian means ‘work’.
Clearly, the project meant a lot to him. He wrote a friend not long before he died: “Of all my works, that which pleases me the most is the Casa that I had built in Milan to shelter elderly singers who have not been favored by fortune, or who when they were young did not have the virtue of saving their money. Poor and dear companions of my life!”
Consider the contrast between the two great figures of 19th century opera. Richard Wagner built a theater solely devoted to the performance of his operas that was paid for by others. Giuseppe Verdi built a home for musicians which he funded solely with his own money.
Over the century and a quarter since the home opened about 1500 musicians have passed their final days in a splendid building designed and staffed to meet their needs. Recently young musicians have been housed there for brief periods to allow the knowledge acquired by their older colleagues to be preserved.
It’s been 75 years since Verdi’s work passed to the public domain and thus royalties stopped. The home is still well funded because of the foresight of its administrators who invested part of the Verdi income in apartment buildings which provides a steady income. There have also been generous gifts from affluent musicians such as Luciano Pavarotti and the Toscanini heirs. The home has wisely and successfully avoided seeking money from the government.
After Verdi died in January 1901, he was interred in a temporary grave. When the permanent site, at the Casa Verdi of course, was ready more than 350,00 people accompanied the funeral cortege. It is still the largest public gathering in Italian history. This vast throng spontaneously began singing Va pensiero the great chorus from Verdi’s third opera, Nabucco, and his first success. Verdi’s grave is next to that of his wife Giuseppina – Joseph and Josephine.
The video below is a six minute piece by PBS devoted to a summary of the Casa Verdi as it is today. Well worth six minutes of your time.
Casa Verdi Video
With the possible exception of the Bridal March from Lohengrin, the music that opens Act 3 of Die Walküre – The Ride of the Valkyries – is the most familiar written by Richard Wagner. The Ride takes around eight minutes, and begins in the prelude to the third act, building up successive layers of accompaniment until the curtain rises to reveal a mountain peak where four of the eight Valkyrie sisters of Brünnhilde have gathered in preparation for the transportation of fallen heroes to Valhalla. As they are joined by the other four, the familiar tune is carried by the orchestra, while, above it, the Valkyries greet each other and sing their battle cry. Apart from the song of the Rhinemaidens in Das Rheingold, it is the only ensemble piece in the first three operas of Wagner’s Ring cycle.
The music is ubiquitous turning up in multiple forms in different settings. Below are eight examples of the tune which according to Rossini’s classification belong to the “moments” category. The Italian master said, “Wagner has his moment, but he also has his half hours.” At first, Wagner objected to performing the piece apart from the opera, but the demand for the music was so great that he gave in, and he even performed it himself as a conductor away from the opera.
The first version is the music as Wagner wrote it. It’s taken from the telecast of the complete opera by the Met in 2019. While the music is come scrito, the sets are quite distant from the opera’s first performances in Munich in 1870 and Bayreuth in 1876.
Next is a version for solo piano. I’m surprised that Franz Liszt, Wagner’s father-in-law, who outlived Richard by 13 years never did a piano transcription of the piece.
Here’s another version of the music as written. It’s from a concert performance of the opera in Hong Kong. It’s followed by an orchestral adaptation of the music that omits the vocal parts. It’s probably most often performed this way as it obviates the need to hire eight singers for just a few minutes of performance time. And the music works quite well as an orchestral piece.
Orchestral version of the Ride of the Valkyries
The next version is a real oddball. It’s for eight pianos. That’s right – eight! If you look carefully you’ll see the late James Levine on piano #1.
The most striking scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now is the helicopter attack on a Viet Cong held village. The Ride is an example of diegetic music. It’s played from a tape recorder through loudspeakers to encourage the bellicosity of the strike force.
The next version is very short. It’s for four trombones. There’s only so much you can do with the Ride and four trombones.
Finally, there Bugs Bunny whose career was punctuated by a lot of opera and classical music. This cartoon shows the LA Phil accompanying the cartoon. The music is all Wagner. In addition to The Ride, there’s music from The Flying Dutchman and music from Tannhäuser.
What’s Opera, Doc?
Maria Jeritza (1887-1982) was one of opera’s most glamorous and accomplished sopranos of the pre-World War I years extending to the early 30s. She was famous for her large and silvery spinto and her flamboyant acting which sometimes crossed the border into overacting.
Born Marie Jedličková in the Moravian city of Brno, she trained at that city’s conservatory. The bulk of her career was made at the Vienna State Opera where she sang from 1912–1934 and 1950-1953 and at the Metropolitan Opera where she gave 344 performances between 1920 and 1932. She appeared in one performance of Die Fledermaus as Rosalinde in 1951.
Her repertory was an unusual one. It was built around Puccini and a few of his contemporaries, Wagner and Strauss, and several French operas, notably Carmen. She sang no Verdi during her New York years. The Vienna Opera’s archives are not user friendly, so I couldn’t tell if she sang Verdi there.
An aside about opera archives. The Met has the best such site, but that’s not saying much. It recently went through a complete overhaul that made it much harder to find useful information than before they spent a lot of time and money to “upgrade” the site. The viewer has to work a lot harder to find the info he’s after which is still on the site but in a well camouflaged position which requires more clicks and a bit of computer savvy. Back to Jeritza.
Her Puccini operas were Tosca, La Fanciulla Del West, Il Tabarro (in Vienna not New York), and Turandot. She sang all the Wagner soprano roles up to Die Walküre in which she was Sieglinde. She avoided the heaviest Wagner roles.
She made her New York debut on November 19, 1921 as Marietta/ Marie in the company’s first performance of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt. She received wonderful reviews. The opera went over the heads of the critics and the audiences as it disappeared after 12 performances and has yet to reappear after more than a century of neglect. Gluck das mir verlieb is sung in the opera by both the tenor and the soprano.
Twelve days later she gave her first performance as Tosca. Her interpretation of Puccini’s diva is legendary. Both the critics and the audience were overwhelmed by her performance and glamorous good looks. She sang Vissi D’arte prone on the floor after being thrown there by Scarpia. She said Puccini had enthusiastically approved this stage business. Thereafter she was one of the Met’s brightest stars. Her combination of vocal prowess, beauty, and acting made her unique. She eventually settled in the US and lived the remainder of her long life after retiring from opera in America.
The great tenor Aureliano Pertile had the bad luck to make his Met debut in the same performance of Tosca that was dominated by Jeritza’s triumph. He went almost noticed and left the company after only one season to return to La Scala where he was Toscanini’s favorite tenor.
She was closely associated with Richard Strauss and was the first Ariadne in both versions of Ariadne Auf Naxos as well as the first Empress in the composer’s Die Frau Ohne Schatten. Es gibt ein Reich appears in the second half of Ariadne – the Opera. Unfortunately for New York audiences, Ariadne did not reach the Met until 1962.
Another important first for Jeritza was the title role in Puccini’s Turandot at the North American premiere of the opera at the Met on Nov 16, 1926. Unfortunately, she did not record any of the music from this opera. The critics were kind to Jeritza, but not to Puccini’s score. Although it opened the following season, it disappeared from the Met’s repertory after 27 performances the last of which was in 1930. It did not return for 31 years until Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli gave it enduring life and a new generation of critics realized its true worth.
Cavalleria Rusticana was a frequent addition to her repertoire. Voi lo sapete depicts Santuzza’s desperate situation after being seduced by Turiddu and then abandoned. The inference, though not stated, is that she’s enceinte.
Jeritza’s spinto soprano allowed her to sing mezzo roles. In Der Rosenkavalier she was Octavian. Her Carmen was one of her rare failures. She was savaged by the critics for her sluttish impersonation of Bizet’s gypsy. She sang with a cigarette in her mouth and lying on a table and in general gave an over the top impersonation.
Wagner was a frequent entry to her role list. Der Fliegende Holländer was his fourth opera and first success. In Traft ihr das Schiff the teenage Senta, looks upon a picture of the legendary Dutchman that hangs from the wall; she desires to save him. She sings to her friends the story of the Dutchman and how Satan heard him swear and took him at his word. She vows to save him by her fidelity. When it comes to immature punchdrunk love Senta is in the same class as Verdi’s Gilda – Rigoletto’s daughter.
Jeritza frequently appeared as Elsa in Lohengrin. In the first act, Elsa who’s falsely accused of murdering her brother needs a champion to defend her in a trial by combat. In Elsa’s dream (Einsam in trüben Tagen) she laments her brother’s fate. Lohengrin appears shortly thereafter and wins the trial.
The only Ring opera in her repertoire was Die Walküre – she was Sieglinde. Du bist Der Lenz is sung by both Sieglinde and Siegmund. This excerpt is the soprano part. Du bist der Lenz. She never sang Isolde onstage but did make a fine recording of the Liebestod – Mild und leise
Massenet’s Thaïs was a regular role for her. She had the good looks to make her portrayal of a beautiful courtesan believable. The Mirror aria, Dis-moi que je suis belle, is in Act 2. Thaïs realizes that one day, old age will destroy her beauty. Another Massenet opera that she did not sing in New York is Hérodiade. This is a different telling of the story of John (Jean) the Baptist and Salome who in this version finds religion and is a good girl, unlike Strauss’s Salome who is deranged. Il est doux, il est bon is in Act 1, Salome muses over the virtues of Jean.
Jeritza was a star of the first magnitude. She had it all and made the most of her gifts and magnetism. The Moravian Thunderbolt was a one of a kind.
In art, as in life things go awry. People have relationships and interactions that burn with disatisfaction and frustration. Opera depicts these calamaties with unsurprising frequency. Today’s offering is a litany of bad behavior – sometimes one the part of one half of a pair other times by both.
I’ll start with opera’s biggest kvetch – the argument between Wotan and his wife Fricka that makes up the first scene of Act 2 of Die Walküre.
On a high mountain ridge, Wotan instructs Brünnhilde, his Valkyrie daughter, to protect Siegmund in his forthcoming battle with Hunding. Fricka arrives, and in her role as goddess of family values demands that Siegmund and Sieglinde be punished for their adultery and incest. She scorns Wotan’s argument that he requires Siegmund as a “free hero”, who can further his plans to recover the ring from Fafner, uninhibited by Wotan’s contracts. She retorts that Siegmund is not free but is Wotan’s pawn, whose every move the god seeks to direct. Defeated by Fricka’s argument, Wotan reluctantly agrees that he will not protect Siegmund.
This brief synopsis give little feel for the wrong Fricka feels from her wayward husband’s mistreatment of her. He’s been a lousay husband and his wife intends to exact retribution: “O why wail I o’er wedlock and vows which thyself thou first hast profaned. The truest wife thou still hast betrayed; never a deep and never a height but there turned thirsting ever thy looks, as thy changeful humor allured thee, and stung my heart with thy scorn.Saddened in spirit, must I behold thee fare to the fight with the graceless maidens, whom lawless love hath given to thee.” She’s too much for the ruler of the gods who at his core is a henpecked husband. Fricka browbeats Wotan
Mozart’s best operas are about bad behavior. In The Marriage of Figaro the Count is a particularly obnoxious character. He wants to seduce anything he can reach. In the opera’s last scene he realizes that the Susanna he was trying to mount is actually his wife. In an inspired moment he asks his wife to forgive him which she does, but he’ll do it again. He a lech. Contessa Perdono
Don Giovanni’s relationships with everyone are freighted with nastiness. He thinks only of himsdelf. He is in fact the perfect psychopath. The Don doesn’t have a real aria despite the prominence of his role. His essential pathological personality is best depicted by his mistreated servant Leporello’s catalogue aria.
Another operatic psychopath is the Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto. He’s a murderer, a rapist, a ruthless autocrat who leaves mayhem in his wake without paying a cent in fare. In short, a monster with great tunes. He treats Gilda as an object. She’s just fertilizer for his lust. But their duet is beautiful if one can ignore the cynicsm underlying the piece. T’amo! T’amo; ripetilo sì caro accento … È il sol dell’anima… Addio, addio speranza ed anima!
Otello’s mistreatment of the loyal and faithful Desdemona is painful to watch. His complete psychic disintegration comes to a boil in the finale of Act 3. Otello is reduced to a quivering heap of inchoate reactions. He is no longer a man, rather he is a puppet. The music that depicts his decomposition is the most complex Verdi ever wrote. Otello Act 3 finale
Gounod’s Faust consists largely in mistreating Marguerite. After being made pregnant by Faust and then abandoned by him she goes to church where she is surrounded and mocked by the devil and his minions. Obviously she didn’t deserve the horrible treatment she receives. Faust Church Scene
The verismo composers focused almost entirely on bad relationships. I’ll include Puccini among them though he is more than a verismo figure. Leoncavallo’s only usccessful opera, Pagliacci, ends with its famous play within a play. Canio the head of an itinerant group of players is married to a much younger woman who is unfaithful to him. He solves his marital problems by killing them both during a performance. No, Pagliaccio non son
In Cavalleria Rusticana the tenor Turridu has seduced Santuzza. But he’s too busy cavorting with Alfio’s wife Lola to care much about Santuzza’s loss of virtue. She messes up the situation even more by telling Alfio about his wife’s dalliance with Turridu. Alfio then ends the opera by killing Turiddu in a knife fight. Ettore Bastianini and Renata Tebaldi tear up the scenary in Oh! Il Signore vi manda, compar Alfio…. during which Alfio learns he’s a cuckhold which in turn leads to the fatal denouement.
Puccini’s Il Tabarro has another older man unhapily married to a younger woman. She too is carrying on with a young man who works for her husband. Michele and Giorgetta recallthe days before their child died and how he could cover the two of them under his cloak. He is distressed about being twice her age; she comforts him but she still will not kiss him, and goes off. Their poignant duet is full of sadness and regret. Come è difficile esser felici!….
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is a protracted depiction of the unalloyed mistreatment of its noble protagonist. Of course, even trusting nobility is not infinite, Eventually death is the only surcease. Death of Butterfly
Perhaps misalliance is too mild a word for the extremes of poor treatment that befall the shadows of reality that flash upon the lyric stage, but it’s the best I can do. The great composers do much better.
The title translates to “Mimì is very sick.” It’s from Act 3 of Puccini’s La Bohème. The outline of the episode is below. Mimì is dying from tuberculosis and her lover Rodolfo is too poor to help and wants her to leave him for another man who will better care for her. The scene represents Puccini’s extraordinary ability to set ordinary conversation to the most beautiful music. It’s a rare gift possessed by the barest handful of operatic composers – all who had were at the top of the art. Puccini’s music goes directly to the heart, capturing the core of one’s emotional center.
Rodolfo wakes up and comes out looking for Marcello. Mimì hides and overhears Rodolfo first telling Marcello that he left Mimì because of her coquettishness, but finally confessing that his jealousy is a sham: he fears she is slowly being consumed by a deadly illness (most likely tuberculosis, known by the catchall name “consumption” in the nineteenth century). Rodolfo, in his poverty, can do little to help Mimì and hopes that his pretended unkindness will inspire her to seek another, wealthier suitor. Out of kindness towards Mimì, Marcello tries to silence him, but she has already heard all. Her weeping and coughing reveal her presence, and Rodolfo hurries to her. Musetta’s laughter is heard and Marcello goes to find out what has happened.
The tenor takes the lead in this brief bit of stage business. The lovely and poignant music is rarely played outside of a staged performance, but it is so good that it deserves a separate platform. Below are seven takes on the episode that only a supreme master could conjure.
First Beniamino Gigli’s reading. The great lyric tenor had the perfect voice for this part.
Giuseppe Di Stefano had an even richer lyric tenor than Gigli and was unqiuely able to impart emotional content into his singing that still defies analysis. Di Stefano Mimì è Tanto Malata!
Jussi Björling had one of the most beautiful tenor voices of the last century. If he lacked anything it was deep emotional committment. His complete recording to the opera is one of the best yet made. Björling Mimì è Tanto Malata!
La Bohème was at the center of Luciano Pavarotti’s repertoire. Accordingly, he delivers the lines in exemplary fashion. Pavarotti Mimì è Tanto Malata!
Giuseppe Di Stefano much influenced Jose Carreras. Like the Sicilian tenor, he had a beautiful voice which didn’t last too long. Partly as the result of overly heavy use and also as the consequence of the acute luekemia he suffered, and was cured of, in the late eighties. His singing is first class as it always was in his too brief prime. Carreras Mimì è Tanto Malata!
Rolando Villazon had one of the most beautiful tenor voices of the first decade of the 21 century. For reasons still mysterious it just vanished one day. He seemed headed to being the next Placido Domingo, but alas it was not to be. Still we have his recordings from before the vocal retirerment. Villazon Mimì è Tanto Malata!
Andrea Bocelli’s opera recording have not been among his most successful outtings. His problem has been faulty intonation. But in this selection he does very well. Bocelli Mimì è Tanto Malata!
Well, this bit of Puccinian genius speaks volumes about the immense talent the composer from Lucca was gifted with. We have not seen his like since his demise on Nov 29, 1924. I hope the Met and La Scala have appropriate commemorative events schedule to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of the last great Italian composer of operas.
No composer ever wrote a better opera than Puccini’s sad tale of love and abuse set in early 20th century Japan. The late Anthony Minghella’s production has been regularly staged at the Met since it opened the season in 2006. I was at that first performance and liked its colorful and spare staging except for the puppet used to depict Butterfly’s son. It was a bad idea that has worsened over the years. This production of the perennial favorite served as the debut of the celebrated soprano Asmik Grigorian who has sung just about everywhere before her New York appearances as Cio-Cio-San.
I’ll begin with the end. Just before the Butterfly’s death scene the screen went dark and the sound departed with it. After a few seconds, the video returned but without the sound. This type of outage has happened with distressing frequency over the years since the start of the HD series. One such event was Werther’s death scene with Jonas Kaufmann as Massenet’s lovesick protagonist. Today’s technical disaster was particularly upsetting as Gregorian’s Butterfly was exceptionally well done. Everything was in place for a cathartic conclusion when the opera morphed into a silent movie. I don’t know how widespread the signal loss was.
The emotional core of Puccini’s masterpiece is Act 2. One punch to the emotional gut follows another. From ‘Un bel di’ to Sharpless’s futile attempt to read Pinkerton’s letter to Butterfly’s moment of false triumph when she thinks Pinkerton is coming back to her to the Humming Chorus – inspiration follows inspiration. The measure of a production’s stagings and the soprano’s grasp of her role is the audience’s reaction to Butterfly’s expression of triumph. If they don’t applaud even as the music continues the director and/or the singer has discharged a blank. Today Grigorian belted out the phrase of victory and then collapsed. The audience applauded. Puccini’s theatrical and musical genius is so powerful that an audience is compelled to applaud a powerful rendition of the scene. In more than a score of Butterfly performances I’ve never seen a reaction like that of Grigorian, but it worked and the audience got the message.
Grigorian’s voice and persona are unique. Her middle voice is stentorian and is why she can sing demanding roles like Turandot and Salome. Her top is secure, but sometimes thins a bit and doesn’t have the volume of her middle voice. Her acting is on the mark and suggests that she spends a lot of time perfecting her characterization of the person she portrays.
Puccini’s orchestration is so evocative and powerful that a conductor of great sensitivity and control is needed behind the baton. Maestra Xian Zhang who made her Met debut with this run of Butterfly led a fine performance from the Met’s matchless orchestra. She deserves more work from the company.
Tenor Jonathan Tetelman has a nice sounding voice that he pushes too hard. Also, his basic vocal production is off, and his sound sometimes flutters. I doubt his career will be long if he doesn’t find his vocal equilibrium.
Elizabeth DeShong has sung the faithful servant, Suzuki, many times. As usual, her performance was satisfying and emotionally engaged.
Baritone Lucas Meachem is a solid performer who brings all the right vocal and acting gear to everything he performs. He typically sings the less demanding baritone leads with the company. Away from it, he sings many of the big baritone parts like the Count in Il Trovatore. He was engaging as a career State Department employee stuck at a dead end post.
The remainder of the cast all played their roles with dispatch. The production is well worth attending the rerun next Wednesday. Presumably, the opera’s riveting conclusion will be repaired and intact by then. But there’s no way to avoid the damn puppet. The Met’s program for this performance is below.
Madama Butterfly Met Program 2024Download
Asmik Grigorian is a Lithuanian soprano (b 1981) who just made her Met debut in the title role of Madama Butterfly. She will repeat the role in the final telecast of this year’s Met in HD series on Saturday, May 11. Over the last decade, she has appeared in an astounding variety of roles at most of the world’s leading opera houses. Her voice is basically a lirico-spinto soprano that is so perfectly produced that she can sing dramatic roles without strain or damage.
She can handle all the great Puccini roles including Turandot, Traviata, Lady Macbeth, Norma, and Salome, with vocal ease, sensitivity, and beauty. She is also very attractive and is a commanding actress. Think Callas with a beautiful voice. Below are 10 videos showing both her artistry and her versatility. Each one is worth the time it takes to view and listen to this extraordinary artist. I’ll have more to say about her after watching her performance next week. She’s worth a trip to the local theater that carries the Met’s HD shows.
Guns and show business are found together almost as frequently as politicians and TV cameras. Opera is no exception Below are eight operas, well the last one is a trespasser, in which guns are part of the action. In some they are pivotal. My only requirement for inclusion in this article is that gunshots must be heard during the performance. A description without a shot is not enough for inclusion.
In the first of these, Der Freischütz, they are the whole story. The opera is a Singspiel with spoken dialogue like Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Beethoven’s Fidelio. Max wants to marry Agathe the head forester’s daughter, but to do so he has to prove his prowess as a marksman. The opera opens with Max losing a shooting contest to a peasant, Kilian, who is proclaimed ‘King of marksmen’. Max is overcome by despair that he will lose Agathe if his aim doesn’t improve. Agathe has rejected Kaspar who is the assistant forester and accordingly, he hates her, her father, and Max. He’s out for revenge. Kaspar is in league with the Devil who goes by the name Samiel. He’s been making magic bullets. He gives Max his last one and tells him to shoot an eagle far above outside of the range of any gun not loaded with a magic bullet. Max aims at the bird and is amazed to score a lethal hit. Kaspar persuades Max to meet him at midnight in the terrible Wolf’s Glen to cast seven more magic bullets. Six will hit, but the seventh belongs to the Samiel who can guide it wherever he pleases.
By the time Act 3 arrives they have made seven magic bullets. Each has used six. The last one is Max’s – the Devil’s bullet. Kaspar has sold his soul to the Devil and payment is now due. He makes a deal with Samiel that if Max kills Agathe with the seventh bullet, he, Kaspar, will get a three year reprieve and Max will go directly to Hell. What Kaspar doesn’t know is that Agathe is wearing a magic wedding gown that will protect her from harm. At the marksmanship trial, Max takes his shot which instead of hitting Agathe hits and kills Kaspar. The local prince sentences Max for making magic bullets to a probational year after which he can marry Agathe.
Der Freischütz was a huge success after its premiere in 1821 and is considered the first German romantic opera. It’s still occasionally performed. The Met last did it in 1970.
There’s a single shot in Carmen. It’s fired in Act 3 after Micaëla’s aria. Don Jose is keeping lookout when he sees an intruder. He fires but misses as he is as lousy a shot as he is a lover. The intruder is Escsamillo the famous bullfighter. Jose is first delighted to meet the star torero but turns ugly when he realizes that Escamillo is intent on seeing Carmen. They fight, but the rest of the gang shows up and stops the altercation. Jose shoots but misses
Tchaikovsky’s most performed opera, Eugene Onegin, features a duel to the death in Act 2. Onegin and Lensky are very close friends but get into a stupid argument when the former dances with the latter’s fiance. Onegin kills his friend who never gets off a shot. Puskin who wrote the verse novel on which the opera is based also died in a duel. Onegin duel
The entire plot of Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino stems from an errant shot. In the opera’s first scene, Don Alvaro drops his pistol in submission to the Marquis of Calatrava who has caught him about to elope with his daughter Leonora. In an example of anything that can go wrong will go wrong, the gun goes off mortality wounding the Marquis who curses his daughter with his dying words. The following excerpt is from a legendary performance of the opera in 1956 featuring Zinka Milanov, Richard Tucker, Leonard Warren, and Cesare Siepi. Gun goes off
In Act 3 Don Alvaro makes friends with Don Carlo, Leonora’s brother, whose mission in life is to kill Alvaro. They’re both using aliases and don’t recognize each other. This friendship proves one of the shortest in human experience. They run off to fight the Battle of Velletri which is over in about a minute. There are a lot of gunshots that are often omitted, but the Met was firing cannons and muskets in 1956. Battle of Velletri
In Puccini’s Tosca each of the three principals dies differently. Baron Scarpia is stabbed by Tosca. Cavaradossi is executed by firing squad, which Tosca thinks is firing blanks, and after everything has gone wrong she jumps off the Castel Sant’Angelo exclaiming that she and Scarpia will meet before God. Firing squad
When Puccini wrote a cowboy opera, The Girl of the Golden West, it was inevitable that a pistol would be discharged. Several of them go off in Act 2. Dick Johnson, a bandit in disguise, visits Minne (the eponymous Girl) at her house. The local sheriff and his deputies have discovered his identity and are looking for him. He and Minnie fall in love. When he’s about to leave amid a snowstorm several shots are fired and he realizes the danger of leaving when the posse after him is so close. He accepts Minnie’s chaste invitation to stay the night. Sherrif Rance appears and discloses Johnson’s true identity. She tells him to leave and after explaining how his impoverished background led to a life of crime he goes only to be promptly shot. He staggers back into the house where Minnie hides him. Puccini’s opera is now recognized as the masterpiece it is. He thought it the best he had done to the time of its composition. While it will never be as popular as Bohème, Tosca, or Butterfly it is a work of extraordinary beauty and construction. First the gunshots in the distance, then the one that wounds Johnson. Minnie is Renata Tebaldi, Johnson is Mario Del Monaco. Both were at their vocal zeniths when this recording was made in the mid 50s. Notice how Puccini weaves melodies of great beauty as the dialogue proceeds – a skill granted to only a handful of composers.
Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace is only slightly shorter than the novel on which it is based. It’s in two parts and 13 scenes, the last of these depicts the fates of the veteran Platon Karataev and Pierre Bezukhov – the latter a protagonist of both the novel and opera. They have been rounded up by the French as prisoners and are with them as they retreat from Russia. Karataev cannot keep up and is shot, but Pierre and the others are rescued by the partisans. The first shot is the one that kills Karataev. This alerts the partisans to the French troops’ location and they attack with many volleys. Karataev’s execution and the rescue of Pierre.
The last work is not an opera though it has been performed by opera companies. Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story is loosely based on the plot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Tony has killed Bernardo in Act 1. At the end of Act 2, he is shot by Bernardo’s friend Chino. Tony had been told that Maria was murdered and wants Chino to kill him. Tony’s death scene is below in a video taken from the 1961 movie.
There are doubtless more operas with gunshots, but the ones above are those that came to me without having to exert myself by doing some research and searching.
Today’s HD telecast of Puccini’s afternoon off – La Rondine – was a repeat of the production of 2009 but with a different cast. The composer’s attempt to write an Italian opera vaguely in the style of a Viennese operetta contains a lot of beautiful music in the service of a work that’s not close to the masterpieces of his maturity. He also repeats tunes at a greater than usual frequency – to be sure, they’re good tunes but a little more invention would have made the work stronger. The ’09 telecast was marred by a technical glitch that wiped out the second half of Act 2 and the intermission. Today, management warning that the local bad weather might cause technical problems proved wrong. There was not a hitch in transmission.
For La Rondine to work onstage there must be a fine singing actress as Magda – aka The Swallow. Angel Blue managed the first part with fine singing except for an occasional strained note. The acting part was essentially ignored. She has gained so much weight in recent years that just moving around the stage is the best she can do. Verisimilitude is no longer part of her armamentarium, not that verisimilitude is a regular visitor to the operatic stage.
Tenor Jonathan Tetelman made his Met debut this year as Ruggero the country bumpkin who falls in love with the wrong woman. He started as a baritone and later transitioned to tenor. He has been singing lyric roles such as Rodolfo in La Bohème, but I think he’s really a spinto and should move to heavier roles which apparently he’s doing. His voice seems not fully formed and sometimes quivers a bit. In what is a lyric part he did a lot of fortissimo singing or yelling. His basic sound when under full control is impressive. A plus, he looked great – tall, dark, and handsome. General manager Peter Gelb announced before the show that Tetelman was affected by seasonal allergies, but would soldier on regardless. I’ve already stated many times that singers should not perform if they can’t give their best and that such announcements begging for pre-performance forgiveness are infra dig.
Tenor Bekhzod Davronov gave the best performance of the afternoon as the poet Prunier. He has a fine lyric voice and has been singing leading roles in many houses. He’ll be Alfredo in Santa Fe Opera’s staging of La Traviata this summer. His acting was the best of the cast. The Met should bring him back for bigger roles.
Soprano Emily Pogorelc was the maid Yvette. Vocally she was fine. She portrayed the maid having an affair with Prunier as a flibbertigibbet, a persona she carried through to the intermission interview during which she barely allowed Davronov a word regardless of the question asked. He did manage to say hello to his native Uzbekistan.
Bass-baritone Alfred Walker was very impressive as Rambaldo the man who was keeping Magda before she ran away with Ruggerro. In this production, he took her back when she decided marriage to a rube was not for her. The Met should give him bigger roles. His sound and stage presence are outstanding.
Conductor Speranza Scappucci made her Met debut in this production. The Rome native was the first female conductor at La Scala. She recently has been named the principal guest conductor at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She led today’s performance with control and polish.
The Met’s art deco sets are still as excellent as 15 years ago. Perhaps even more so given the scenic atrocities that have littered its stage over the last decade and a half. If you are a Puccini fan, and if not you should be, and missed the broadcast catching the repeat next week is worthwhile.
The Met’s program for this performance is below the cast as a pdf.
La-Rondine-Met-2024-programDownload
Aprille Millo (b 1958) is an American soprano who became famous in her twenties. She appeared 161 times at the Met between 1984 and 2007. She was at her vocal peak between 1986 and 1996. Thereafter her appearances at the Met decreased until until she stopped singing with the company before she was 50.
She was the daughter of two opera singers. Born in New York and raised in California she received most of her musical education from her parents. The details of her life can be found here. Why her career tailed off at a premature age is not known to me. At her best, she had a lush spinto soprano that was reminiscent of Zinka Milanov. Like Milanov she was best known for her Verdi interpretations. Her roles outside the Verdi canon were those that Milanov also sang. Though there are numerous recordings of her singing a lot of them are not readily available. Below are seven examples of her art all from live performances. They are presented in the order of their composition.
‘Di geloso amor sprezzato’ is the trio that close Act 1 of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. It is the perfect example of the composer’s striking ability to depict jealousy and explosive energy in music. Luciano Pavarotti and Sherrill Milnes join Millo.
In the first scene of Act 3 of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera Renato decides to kill his wife Amelia whom he thinks guilty of an adulterous affair with his best friend. She’s almost guilty but not quite as Renato happened on the pair before carnal contact was possible. In ‘Morrò ma prima in grazia’ she protests her innocence and begs to see her son one last time.
‘Pace, pace, mio Dio’ from La Forza Del Destino is too well known to require more comment than I have already given it here in previous posts. Millo’s reading is outstanding both in the timbre of her sound and for its sensitive phrasing.
Next, Aida’s two great arias. The role was one of Millo’s finest. ‘Ritorna vincitor’ depicts Aida’s inner conflict between the welfare of her country (Ethiopia) and her father versus that of the man she loves who has just been appointed general of the Egyptian army that is intent on crushing her country. in the Nile Scene after her country has been decisively defeated by the Egyptians Aida laments that she will never see her homeland again. ‘O Patria mia’
Umberto Giordano’s universally successful opera is Andrea Chenier. Premiered in 1896 at La Scala it has virtuoso parts for soprano, baritone, and tenor – especially the last who had four arias. The big soprano aria ‘La momma morta’ is in Act 3. The French Revolution claimed the life of the mother of the aristocrat Maddalena di Coigny and left her homeless.
Antonín Dvořák’s ninth of 10 operas was written in 1900. It is the only one to have achieved a place in the international repertory. The ‘Song to the Moon’ is the most well known piece from the opera. It is often performed in recitals and on recordings. It occurs in Act 1. The water nymph, Rusalka, has fallen in love with a human prince. In the aria, she asks the moon to tell the prince of her love.
Millo was one of the great spinto sopranos for about a decade. Her singing at its best places her among the great singers of her type of any era. She still has a devoted following who relish her accomplishments.
The title above is that of a new CD containing 23 selections sung by the late tenor. Why another Lanza disc when so many are already available? These have been remastered and converted to Digitally Extracted Stereo (DES).
When listened to on a good audio system the effect is magical. Lanza’s voice is even more beautiful than it sounded on the original mono recordings. The disc is available at Amazon – Golden Days Mario Lanza. Also, if you download it, only do so in a lossless format so that the full effect of the DES conversion will be maintained.
The only tenors I can think of with voices as beautiful as Lanza’s are Joseph Schmidt, Jussi Björling, and Giuseppe Di Stefano. His vocal production and technique were flawless; if premature death had not been his sad fate he likely would have morphed into a full-fledged spinto while retaining the beauty of his tone. If that had happened, and he had escaped the deadly embrace of the movie business, he would have been the greatest tenor of the 20th century.
Don’t buy this disc unless you have a first-rate audio system. Without it you will not be able to appreciate the wonderful technical effect that Robin Cherry and Stephen Cutler have achieved using the DES system.
My deep appreciation to Professor Derek McGovern for sending me the disc. He is a long-time Lanza aficionado who oversees the mariolanzatenor.com website and wrote the liner notes. The disc’s contents are below. It is a must have for Lanza fans or anyone interested in great singing.
Carlo Bergonzi (1924-2014) enjoyed a long career as a leading tenor with all of the world’s major opera companies. He was born in Polesine Parmense near Parma. During World War II he was an active anti-Nazi and in 1943 was imprisoned by the Germans. After being released by the Russians he walked over 100 km to reach an American base. On the way he contracted typhoid fever. By the time he reached Parma, he weighed 80 pounds. He made up for this loss in his later years.
He began his operatic career in 1948 as a baritone. After several years he realized that he was a tenor and retrained his voice for that range. He made his debut as a tenor in Bari in 1951. By 1953 he was at La Scala. His American debut was in Chicago in 1955. He was at the Met the following year, giving 323 performances over the next 32 years.
I heard him often during the first five years of his appearances in New York. After leaving New York I didn’t hear him in performance again until 1981 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago when he substituted for an indisposed Luciano Pavarotti as Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’elisir D’amore. Though he looked like a giant inverted bowling pin, his singing was great.
I also met him in a parking lot sometime in the early 80s. Between meetings in different Italian cities, my wife and I decided to make a side trip to Busseto to visit Verdi country. As we knew Bergonzi ran a small hotel and restaurant in the town, I Due Foscari, we booked a room for a single night. As we drove up to the hotel, Bergonzi was in the parking lot and motioned us to the spot he wanted he wanted us to deposit our car. That was the sum of our interactions during the four days we stayed at his Inn. There was no problem extending our visit as we were the only guests. I know the date was after 1981 as the small lobby of the hotel prominently displayed a large framed poster announcing the Met’s 25th Anniversary Bergonzi Gala autographed by Pavarotti who performed during the event. We also had dinner at the tenor’s restaurant. The food was excellent.
The reason we extended our time in Bussetto was because the town and its environs are full of points of interest. Verdi’s birthplace is in Le Roncole just outside of the town. The Villa Verdi is in Sant’Agata just outside of Busseto in the opposite direction. Cremona is a short drive away.
Bergonzi was particularly known for his singing of Verdi’s operas, though he was equally fine in all the other standard Italian tenor roles. His voice was a lirico spinto that while not characterized by an opulent sound was finely produced across its entire range. I think it was one of those voices that sounds better in the theater than on recordings. Below are 10 examples of Bergonzi’s singing that should give a good idea why he was so successful for such a long time.
First Verdi. The selections are presented in the order of their composition except for the final song. Ernani was composed in 1844 to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It was the first of the 10 the writer was to provide for Verdi. Based on Victor Hugo’s play Hernani it was a big success and the first Verdi opera to win a large space in the international repertory. Come rugiada al cespite is in the first act. Ernani tells his bandit gang that the woman he loves, Elvira, is about to be forced to marry an old man. He plans to abduct, or from his perspective save her.
Verdi’s I Masnadieri is a four-act opera written for Jenny Lind. Based on Schiller’s Die Räuber it was first performed in London under the direction of the composer. Among the attendees at the first performance were Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the Duke of Wellington. All though initially successful it disappeared after 15 years. O mio castel paterno is from Act 1.
Quando le sere al placido occurs in scene 3 of Act 2 in Verdi’s Luisa Miller. First performed in 1849 it was Verdi’s 16th opera. It too was based on a Schiller play – Kabale und Liebe. The aria is one of Verdi’s finest creations for the tenor. It requires great exclamatory power as well as the ability to carry a line of exceptional lyrical beauty.
Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera is among his greatest creations. It has everything – wonderful music, arias of the finest construction, passion, and exceptional dramatic impact. Forse la soglia attinse opens the second scene of Act 3. In it, Riccardo or King Gustavo depending on whether the opera is set in colonial Massachusetts or Sweden, shows his evolution from a lighthearted person of power into a mature man ready to sacrifice his own desire for the good of the woman he loves and her husband who was his best friend but who will kill him in the next scene. Another of Verdi’s great works for the tenor.
La vita è inferno all’infelice … O tu che in seno agli angeli occurs at the beginning of the Act 3 of Verdi’s La Forza Del Destinio. It is an ode to life’s misfortunes accompanied by a cloak of self-pity. Yet Don Alvaro, the tenor who sings it, has more disasters ahead of him than those he has hitherto experienced.
Verdi’s Requiem Mass written in honor of the novelist Alessandro Manzoni has a tenor aria in the middle of its ‘Dies Irae’ section. Ingemisco is often performed as a solo as part of a recital or recording.
Bergonzi was equally at home in the works of Puccini. The latter’s third opera, Manon Lescaut, was his first success. Donna non vidi mai depicts Des Grieux’s reaction to Manon’s youthful beauty. It is the first of a succession of great tenor arias all related to the tenor’s love for the soprano.
Che gelida manina is Rodolfo’s reaction to Mimì’s cold hand just after they’ve met in his garret on a very chilly Christmas Eve. Another operatic case of love at first sight. La Bohème is performed so often at the Met that it can sometimes be heard when the house is dark.
Recondita armonia is in the first act of Tosca. The artist Mario Cavaradossi is painting a picture of Mary Magdalene based on the blonde Marchesa Atavanti. He comments on the strange harmony between the fair-haired Marchesa and his dark-haired lover Floria Tosca.
Finally, a song. Paolo Tosti (1846-1916) was an Italian composer of songs. After emerging from poverty he became very successful and moved to England where even more fame and wealth awaited him. He became a British citizen and was knighted by his friend King Edward VII. Ideale is one of his best-known and frequently performed works.
Bergonzi’s long and distinguished career overlapped those of Björling, Tucker, Del Monaco, Corelli, Di Stefano, Pavarotti, and Domingo. That he was able to remain at the top of opera’s list for so long and among so many other great tenors was because of the excellence of his technique and the expressive power of his singing.
I couldn’t get to the live broadcast of this opera last Saturday. Accordingly, I went to the encore presentation today.
Bart Sher’s production of Gounod’s opera was telecast by the Met in 2017. In my review of this staging, I said this: “This production, by Bartlett Sher, is new to the Met though its origin goes back to La Scala in 2008. Its time is moved from Renaissance Verona to the 18th century. Actually, the costumes looked more appropriate to Venice than Verona. As is typical with time shifting in opera, the change added nothing to the opera’s realization. All the action took place in what appeared a piazza surrounded by greyish nondescript buildings. This arrangement allowed the action to run smoothly from scene to scene. The sword fights were brilliantly choreographed by BH Barry.” While the sets are dreary, the 18th-century costumes were colorful and attractive. I suspect the decision was made to spend most of the show’s budget on clothes and get by with a unitary set.
Of course, this opera depends on the singers portraying its two eponymous characters. The Met made a very felicitous choice for its leads. The French tenor Benjamin Bernheim has a beautiful lyric voice that is perfect for Roméo. Its timbre is rich and full and he shades his vocal line with skill and nuance to suit the emotional content of the words. He cracked (a little one, not a glass breaker) on the climactic high B-flat that concludes Ah! lêve-toi soleil and showed a little strain on a few other high notes. But these slips were insignificant when weighed against the totality of his singing which was brilliant. His portrayal was not as energetic as that of Vittorio Grigolo (he was in the previous HD show) who climbed the wall leading to Juliette’s balcony in the beyond-famous scene. He wooed from terra firma.
Juliette’s part is even more demanding than that of her lover. Starting with the Waltz Song – ‘Je veux vivre’ – to ‘Amour, ranime mon courage’ which she sings after taking the potion that will lull her to a death-like sleep, and the duets with Roméo that are the highlights of the opera she was master of both ornamental and dramatic singing. On top of the vocal excellence, she is young and attractive enough to pass for the teenager she was playing were it not for Gary Halvorson’s penchant for extreme close-ups. A great performance. I can’t imagine anyone doing the role better.
The supporting cast was all first rate with some being a little more first rate than others. Noteworthy was Will Liverman as Mercutio. His singing of ‘Mab, la reine des mensonges’ was done with panache. Tenor Frederick Ballentine was suitably aggressive as Tybalt.
The Met’s chorus was at its usual high performance level in the opening scene when they depicted the young lovers’ doom and at the beginning of the second act just before Roméo’s aria. Similarly, the Met’s orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s incisive baton played with sheen luminosity, and power during the moments of action and emotional intensity. Once again, the audio gain was set so high that it’s impossible for me to know what the live audience in the Met’s auditorium heard compared to the HD listeners.
Gounod’s opera is often dismissed as a tuneful trifle. This dismissal by musicologists reminds me of the quip (I don’t know who first said it) that a musicologist is someone who can read music but can’t hear it. Verdi’s declaration that the only critic that counts is the audience serves well here. Gounod’s opera has been performed 354 times by the Met. With great singers in the title part and an insightful conductor, it’s a can’t miss show because it’s a great opera.
Roméo et Juliette
Metropolitan Opera House, Sat, March 23, 2024
Charles Gounod | Jules Barbier/Michel Carré
Roméo………..Benjamin Bernheim
Juliette……….Nadine Sierra
Frère Laurent……….Alfred Walker
Stéphano……….Samantha Hankey
Mercutio……….Will Liverman
Benvolio……….Thomas Capobianco
Gertrude……….Eve Gigliotti
Capulet……….Nathan Berg
Tybalt……….Frederick Ballentine
Pâris……….Daniel Rich
Grégorio……….Jeongcheol Cha
Duke of Verona……….Richard Bernstein
Conductor……….Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson
Boulevard des Italiens is the title of French tenor Benjamin Bernheim’s second CD. Released in 2022 it offers 16 selections. The recital presents arias and one duet written by Italian composers to French texts or subsequently adapted to French texts for performances in France.
Bernheim was born in Paris and grew up in Geneva. Before he began his vocal studies at age 10, he studied violin and piano. This musical training doubtless adds to the finesse characteristic of his singing. In addition to being gifted with a beautiful voice, he is able to realize the notes and the text with great artistry.
Over the past several years he has emerged as the leading French tenor currently active. In an interview during the recent Forza telecast, he said he wanted to revive the style embodied by the French tenors of the last century. He mentioned Henri Legay, Georges Thill, and Alain Vinzo as the singers who best embodied the vocal characteristics he seeks to bring to his singing.
Bernheim made his Met debut last season in an Italian opera sung in that language – the Duke in Rigoletto. As of this writing, he is appearing in the Met’s run of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Roméo is better suited to his lyric voice.
The disc’s title literally refers to the Paris street that will take one from the Opera Comique to the Palais Garnier. Metaphorically it connects the music of Italian composers to the French text that Bernheim sings.
These composers are Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti, Spontini, Cherubini, and Mascagni. The duet from Don Carlos is sung with baritone Florian Sempey. He has a serviceable voice that doesn’t detract from the recital.
Unsurprisingly, the best of the arias are by Verdi and Puccini. The aria from Spontini’s La Vestale has a bit of interest, though it is almost never performed today. Mascagni’s opera Amica, his only work written in French, was composed for Geraldine Farrar. I attended a performance of it in Rome in 2008. It was the last of the run and there were more people onstage than in the audience. It is deservedly forgotten. Bernheim’s singing of the aria ‘Pouqois garder ce silence obstine?’ exceeds his material. It shows all his strengths. A lovely lyric voice with an easy top and the ability to sing softly without losing support. This latter ability makes the listener wonder why the tenor wanders into falsetto in some of the other selections when there was no need to do so.
Frédéric Chaslin conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna with sensitivity. The disc, or its online versions, is highly recommended for anyone interested in French tenors and the music written for them, especially when the French tenor is as gifted as Bernheim. Though recorded in 2021 and released the following year as stated above, I somehow missed it until now. But it was worth the wait.
Bernheim is an exceptional artist who if he stays with the music that plays to his vocal strengths, a lyric tenor of grace and ease, will add luster to the stages of the world’s major opera companies for many years. Bernheim’s depiction of Gounod’s Roméo will be telecast this coming Saturday. Nadine Sierra will be Juliette. There should be a repeat the following Wednesday.
Benjamin Bernheim (tenor)
Boulevard des Italiens
Florian Sempey (baritone: Don Carlos)
Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna
Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna / Frédéric Chaslin
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4861964 [59:38]
If you wish to see why Bernheim is making such an impression on the operatic world view the video below.
The Metropolitan Opera’s new staging of Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino has caused much comment about the performance of one of the composer’s great soprano roles by a singer (Lise Davidsen) best known for her performances of the heroic German roles. Many reviewers felt that her performance was an outstanding effort. Others, including me, thought that while she had a great instrument, it was not best suited for Verdi.
For the dramatic parts l heard in performance, the finest Verdi soprano was Zinka Milanov (1908-89). Her great strengths were threefold. She had the perfect timbre for Verdi. Her voice was smooth, without a hint of stridency, and was rich and lush. Second, she had the powerful high notes. required for Verdi’s depiction of moments of extreme emotional intensity. Lastly, she could float a pianissimo high note that though fully supported took on a life of its own as it seemed to come from all parts of the auditorium. I have heard many great sopranos who could sing high notes in alt with delicacy and beauty, but none who could match Milanov in this type of singing. Here she was unique. She worked very hard for a long time to reach the level of excellence that characterized her best years, which were from about age 45 to 50.
Davidsen’s voice is large and powerful. She can sing softly, but it’s not the strongest part of her vocal apparatus. She is reminiscent of Birgit Nilsson. Whether she’ll add the title role of Puccini’s Turandot to her repertory is uncertain, but it’s likely the Italian role that’s best suited for her voice.
I thought it would be of interest to compare the two singers’ rendition of the great aria ‘Pace, pace, mio Dio!’ from Forza’s final scene. I heard Milanov sing Forza in two performances in the 50s. Davidsen I have yet to hear in the theater.
Milanov: Pace, pace, mio Dio!
Davidsen: Pace, pace, mio Dio!
Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino returned to the Met this season after an absence of 18 years. It was staged in a new production supervised by the Polish director Mariusz Trelinski. He moved both the time and places from the middle of the 18th century in Spain and Italy to sometime in the second half of the 20th century in no particular country though the final scene appeared to be in a bombed-out New York City subway station.
The production is best described as an atrocity. It featured projections of all sorts of stuff ranging from spiritual to war helicopters. The opera was portrayed against a background of an unspecified conflict ending in something close to civilization’s collapse. Leonora’s father (the Marquis de Calatrava) also sang the role of Padre Guardiano who for a mysterious reason was blind in the last act. The glorious trio that closes the opera was sung by bass Soloman Howard in his Calatrava persona instead of Verdi’s setting of the piece for Padre Guardiano. The soprano and tenor parts were performed as written. Calatrava seemed to be some sort of Caudillo wearing a military uniform – the Army and country were again unspecified. Leonora seemed to be in a Freudian conflict between her father and lover. By the end of all the onstage mayhem, she was a bag lady in the subway which was even grimier than the real New York tube.
The Met unfortunately has a revolving stage. Trelinski had it moving so much that his players must have been on a max dose of Dramamine. There was so much activity going on during each bit of revolving that all that was missing were wooden horses going up and down.
Then there were the dancing bunnies – female dancers wearing white bunny masks in Act 2 and black ones in Act 3. The reason for their presence remains mysterious. This Forza differed so much from Verdi’s that the English translations of the Italian verses were altered to fit the action or censored to avoid currently unapproved words. For example, Don Carlo almost succeeds in getting Alvaro who is half Inca (mentioned only in Italian in his great third act aria) by changing “Sangue il tinge di mulatto” to describing his heritage as “tainted”. Mulatto is the same in both English and Italian. A true translation would be: “It is colored by your half-breed’s blood.” “Mulattto” could be substituted for “half-breed”.
I’ve wasted enough words on another operatic chimera. Forza works only when three or even four great voices are cast. So how was the singing? It’s hard for me to tell. The singers were all so closely miked and their sound so boosted that what was heard in the movie theater was almost certainly very different from what the in-person audience heard. Nevertheless, I’ll make my best guess as to what was going on live. Lise Davidsen’s soprano is a great instrument, almost in the same class as her fellow Norwegian Kirsten Flagsted and that of the Swedish wonder Birgit Nilsson. She’s worth a special trip to hear her perform. She was fine as Leonora (the third Verdi heroine with that name), but her voice is better suited for German opera like those of Wagner and Strauss. It has more than enough power for the explosive Verdi music, but is short on vocal velvet and the floated pianissimi that are in virtually all of Verdi’s great music for the soprano.
Tenor Brian Jagde has been singing a lot at the Met, mostly to good reviews. I’ve been put off by the harsh sound that characterizes his singing. He has all the notes, but they were not pleasant and lacked squillo. Today he sounded much better than I’ve heard him previously. He was a full-voiced spinto with ringing high notes. The audience reacted very favorably during his post-performance bows, so the better sound may have been real rather than the child of electronic manipulation. He suggested during an intermission interview that Otello was in his future. If he continues to sound as he did today, he could sing the role. This said he didn’t make much of the great Act 3 aria ‘La vita è inferno all’infelice … O tu che in seno agli angeli’ opera’s great monument to sell pity. This is one of the greatest tenor arias ever written and needs great expressive effort as well as powerful utterances. Jagde was fine but offered nothing memorable.
Don Carlo is another in a long line of great baritone parts written by Verdi who was the best friend any operatic baritone ever had. Igor Golovatenko was singing the role for the first time. He has a well formed voice that seems right for Verdi. Again fine, but not memorable.
Bass Soloman Howard, mentioned above, was adequate in his two roles melded into one. His voice is a little light for the Padre part. When not part of the action he appeared zombie-like at what Trelinski thought were critical moments in the story. I missed the significance of these apparitions.
Patrick Carfizzi was vocally at the top of his game as the annoying Fra Melitone. He was a little too angry and hostile for my taste and missed some of the comedy written into the part.
Mezzo Judit Kutasi was satisfying as the gypsy fortune teller Preziosilla. Her rendition of the Rataplan song in Act 3 gave reason for not cutting it as the Met did in the 20th century. The Met also used to scrap the scene at the Inn where the white bunnies cavorted. The rest of the cast did their best in the chaos of this benighted production.
Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin was in better form than during the broadcast of the prima. The famous overture was played with more vigor and force today than during the first performance. His orchestra played, as usual, to perfection. They were lucky in that most of them couldn’t see the stage.
Gary Halvorson’s closeups had the value of preventing the viewer from seeing the onstage action. Virtue hides in many disguises.
In summary, a good performance of a great opera staged like a bad joke. The Met may not do Forza for another 18 years until they can afford a new production. The company has raised its top ticket to $480. You have to be crazy or a New Yorker to pay that much to see this theatrical monstrosity when you can listen to it on the radio for nothing and not have to watch it.
Leonora………Lise Davidsen
Don Alvaro………Brian Jagde
Don Carlo……..Igor Golovatenko
Preziosilla……..Judit Kutasi
Fra Melitone……..Patrick Carfizzi
Marquis de Calatrava/Padre Guardiano……..Soloman Howard
Curra………Stephanie Lauricella
Mayor………Christopher Job
Trabuco……..Carlo Bosi
Surgeon……..Paul Corona
Vendor……..Lee Steiner
Vendor……..Jeremy Little
Vendor………Ned Hanlon
Conductor……….Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Video Director………Gary Halvorson
Production……….Mariusz Trelinski
Set Designer……….Boris Kudlicka
Costume Designer……….Moritz Junge
Lighting Designer……….Marc Heinz
Lighting Designer………Bartek Macias
Lighting Designer………Macko Prusak
Last night the Met Opera presented its new production of Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino. Broadcast on its Sirius XM channel it will be telecast in HD on March 9. Staged as a vehicle for star soprano Lise Davidsen, the performance reached no higher than that encountered at a good provincial German or Italian theater. The production seems to be the latest in the Met’s attempt to annihilate the art form.
It was marred by two problems only one of which I can comment on now. The first was the lack of voices up to the standard needed to realize one of Verdi’d most difficult and inconsistent scores. Davidsen is a great singer, but her voice is made for Wagner and Strauss. It has none of the vocal velvet needed to realize Verdi’s doomed heroine. Power she has plenty, but golden tones are not in her armamentarium. This outing was her first foray into Verdi at the Met and it was not a success. She has the wrong sound and would do best to forget about Verdi. Her sound in this performance was dry and without a trace of Verdian richness.
The second problem was what sounded like another idiot staging from the Met. Since I could only listen to a description of it, I’ll wait for the telecast to dwell on it. It’s set in a modern wartorn city filled with the typical detritus of Eurotrash. When the production team took a bow after the performance there was silence.
The other singers were competent, but that’s all. Forza needs transcendence from its leads. My experience with the opera goes back to the primes of Zinkas Milanov, Richard Tucker, and Leonard Warren who set a standard that still shines like a supernova. Brian Jagde is from the Kurt Baum school of tenors. He has a gravelly unpleasant sound that hits all the notes, but which creates no excitement or charm. Igor Golovetenko gave no hint that his role was one of Verdi’s baritone gems.
Bass Soloman Howard sang both Leonora’s father and Padre Guardiano giving the already afflicted Leonora an excess of paternal fluidity.
Forza is an uneven opera with episodes of glory amid some dry spots. It needs, in addition to great voices, a conductor of vision and power. Yannick Nézet-Séguin seemed afflicted with spasms of somnolence. He slept through the famous overture, but at other times was fully awake at the baton. A strange outing for the usually reliable conductor. Perhaps he was distracted by the the extra-operatic stage business that was described the the broadcast’s announcers. When supported by the right cast and conductor this opera blazes with beauty and inspiration. When surrounded by a pedestrian production it seems endless. Most of the numbers were greeted with almost no applause. I can’t remember the last time the claque had to flog the audience so hard for so little result. They were relentless in their attempt to manufacture enthusiasm from an audience whose attention had lapsed sometime during the overture.
More to come after the upcoming telecast.
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Mozart’s enduringly popular musical comedy was televised this afternoon in its latest Met incarnation directed by Simon McBurney. The bright comedy is swathed in darkness (lighting not tone) in his staging which employs more theatrical gimmicks than found in the trunks of 10 touring magicians. The orchestral pit is raised almost to stage level. A Foley Artist provides sound effects in plain view to the audience’s right. A Visual Artist (audience left) sketches on a blackboard projected to a large screen. A raked platform is raised and lowered without much underlying reason. Most of the players are in modern costumes except for three soldiers who look like the wandered in from Genghis Kahn’s army. Sarastro starts Act 2 with a handheld microphone. Papageno’s costume was doused with bird poop. He wandered into the second row when he wasn’t schlepping a metal ladder over his shoulder. Tamino arrived in a blue track suit that was immediately removed by the three ladies leaving him in his skivvies for much of the first act. The Met’s first flute player was enlisted to the cast as was its glockenspiel player. The tricks were all clever but added nothing tangible to the performance of Mozart’s fairy tale. The company would have done better to stick with Julie Taymor’s previous production. More light and less kitsch.
The singing with two exceptions was up to the Met’s high standards. One was below and the other above. Lawrence Brownlee has a voice well suited for Mozart’s tenors. His singing was consistently on point and apposite to the music. He seems to have added a considerable package of avoirdupois since I last saw him – the occupational hazard of a tenor. Erin Morely was vocally secure and emotionally affecting as Pamina – a very fine performance.
The Danish bass Stephen Milling did not have the orotund sound needed for Sarastro. His low notes were barely audible and unsupported. While he looked the part, he didn’t sound it.
American coloratura soprano Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night was largely confined to a wheelchair or used a cane while dressed as an old hag. More of McBurney’s theatrical camouflage. Vocally, she was sensational. This was the 50th time she has performed this role at the Met which was several times to be declared as a new record for the part. It’s also the only role she has sung with the company. Why this outstanding artist has not been given other parts is another New York puzzle. Her reading of the famous second act aria was revelatory. She gave the staccato notes known to just about everyone a dramatic impact that I’ve never heard before, even from the greatest sopranos who have sung the piece. It was not a great display piece, but rather an emotional outburst from a mother who wants recompense for her stolen child. She received a prolonged ovation after the aria and during her curtain call. A bravura performance.
Baritone Thomas Oliemans was fine as the ladder toting bird besmirched Papageno. His light voice fit the part well. His can’t fail duet with Papageno didn’t fail. The rest of the cast was up to their roles’ requirements. A special note about the problematic part of Monostatos. The libretto describes him as a Moor. He has traditionally been played as a black man. As he’s a very unpleasant fellow this depiction will no longer suffice. He was played by the very white Brenton Ryan. This may be the only part in opera that a black man will not be allowed to play.
Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann has been on a Mozart Marathon for the past four weeks. During that period she has conducted 12 performances of Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. The last show of the former the evening preceding the Flute telecast. She got a taut performance from the Met’s orchestra that was largely overpowered by the directorial hijinks.
In summary, a vocally very good rendition of the popular piece that could have greatly benefited from less machinery and more wattage. You’re on your own vis-à-vi a recommendation to attend the replay if you missed the live performance,
Metropolitan Opera House
June 3, 2023
THE MAGIC FLUTE (DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart-Emanuel Schikaneder
Pamina…………………………………Erin Morley
Tamino…………………………………Lawrence Brownlee
Queen of the Night………………………Kathryn Lewek
Sarastro……………………………….Stephen Milling
Papageno……………………………….Thomas Oliemans
Papagena……………………………….Ashley Emerson
Monostatos……………………………..Brenton Ryan
Speaker………………………………..Harold Wilson
First Lady……………………………..Alexandria Shiner
Second Lady…………………………….Olivia Vote
Third Lady……………………………..Tamara Mumford
Genie………………………………….Deven Agge
Genie………………………………….Julian Knopf
Genie………………………………….Luka Zylik
Priest…………………………………Richard Bernstein
Priest…………………………………Errin Duane Brooks
Armed Men………………………………Errin Duane Brooks
Armed Men………………………………Richard Bernstein
Foley Artist……………………………Ruth Sullivan
Visual Artist…………………………..Blake Habermann
Flute Solo……………………………..Seth Morris
Glockenspiel Solo……………………….Bryan Wagorn
Conductor………………………………Nathalie Stutzmann
Production and Choreography………………Simon McBurney
Set Designer……………………………Michael Levine
Costume Designer………………………..Nicky Gillibrand
Lighting Designer……………………….Jean Kalman
Projection Designer……………………..Finn Ross
Sound Designer………………………….Gareth Fry
Associate Director………………………Rachael Hewer
Video Director……………………..Gary Halvorson
Ivo van Hove’s Jack the Ripper with music by Mozart and sets by Jan Versweyveld masquerading as Le Corbusier was telecast this afternoon from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. The screen and the program said the opera was Don Giovanni, but Mozart’s dramma giocoso had all the giocoso removed by director Hove. The staging played against everything that makes Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera a masterpiece.
The set consisted of stark concrete blocks mostly in the dark except when the Don and Leporello changed identities. Then the lighting was so bright that the rest of the cast must have been blind not to see through the subterfuge. The action was set in the present and both wore the same style and colored suit. The only distinction between the two was a trench coat. The set was so stark that Chandīgarh looked florid by comparison. For some reason unknown to me Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Don Ottavio wore 18th century gear during the ball scene that concludes Act 1.
The title character was portrayed by Peter Mattei, I’m sure at the director’s insistence, as a serial rapist rather than as a great seducer. The Don was rough, crude, and generally uncouth. Why Mattei went along with this deranged staging is a mystery. That Mattei is closing in on 60 (58 on June 3) added to the general sense of menace that clouded this new production. Other directorial miscues were the semi-automatic handguns that littered the stage. The Don doesn’t kill the Commendatore in a duel, rather he whips out his pistol and shoot an unarmed man dead. In Act 2 Masetto appears with guns – one on each hip. There’s also no statue. The Commendatore reappears in Act 2 as a bloody zombie that only Leporello can see. When he shows up for dinner the Don can see him. He doesn’t drag the Don down to hell. He walks off stage right while the Don is lost in smoke and darkness.
This was the third time that Don Giovanni had been on the HD series. The previous production was fine. The Met would gain by junking this one and bringing back the older one. Okay, the production wasn’t a triumph. How as the singing? Very good.
Mattei, age aside, still has the vocal goods to make a vocally convincing Don. Adam Plachetka as his put upon servant was in fine vocal form but was hampered by the production from realizing the full dimensions of one of opera’s great characters.
The young Italian soprano Federica Lombardi made her Met debut in 2019 as Donna Elvira. This production was her first go at Donna Anna. Anna requires a more robust voice than does Elvira. Lombardi had no trouble with the difficult part. Her voice will likely broaden with further experience in this and similar parts.
Ana María Martínez has been absent from the Met since several performances in 2016 as Madama Butterfly. Her lyric soprano was up to the demands of the longtime victim of the Don’s absent affections. Gary Halvorson’s closeups were not kind. Ying Fang’s Zerlina was as pleasant as circumstances permitted. Within seconds of meeting the Don she was on the ground with him on top of her.
Don Ottavio was very well sung by tenor Ben Bliss. His voice seems to have more weight than the tenorinos usually assigned then part. I suspect he could sing some of the bigger lyric parts in the Italian repertory. Alfred Walker was up to Met standard for Masetto. The staging had him covered in blood after the Don beats him up in Act 2. Alexander Tsymbalyuk voice was a little thin as the Commendatore. This is a small part that an up-and-coming bass can do a lot with.
Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann made her Met debut in the first performance of this run. She will also conduct the last HD performance of The Magic Flute in two weeks. She got a vigorous sound from the Met’s superb orchestra.
In summary, a performance, better listened to than viewed. If Francis Ford Coppola ever decided to make The Godfather IV he might enlist Hove as an aid. Not the worst staging of this opera I’ve seen. That distinction goes to Calixto Bieito’s assault on the Mozart masterpiece done several times by the English National Opera.
Metropolitan Opera House
May 20, 2023
*DON GIOVANNI*
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart–Lorenzo Da Ponte
Don Giovanni…………….Peter Mattei
Donna Anna………………Federica Lombardi
Don Ottavio……………..Ben Bliss
Donna Elvira…………….Ana María Martínez
Leporello……………….Adam Plachetka
Zerlina…………………Ying Fang
Masetto…………………Alfred Walker
Commendatore…………….Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Continuo
Fortepiano………………Jonathan C. Kelly
Cello………………….. Kari Jane Docter
Theorbo…………………John Lenti
Mandolin Solo……………John Lenti
Conductor……………….Nathalie Stutzmann
Production………………Ivo van Hove
Set and Lighting Designer…Jan Versweyveld
Costume Designer…………An D’Huys
Projection Designer………Christopher Ash
Choreographer……………Sara Erde
Video Director………….Gary Halvorson
“On The Knocking at the Gate” (1823) is the title of a celebrated essay (it’s below) by Thomas De Quincy (1785-1859) about an event that happens in Act 2 scene 2 of Macbeth. The Macbeths have just murdered King Duncan. Macbeth is horrified by what he has done, his wife less so. Lady Macbeth takes the daggers which he has neglected to leave at the scene of the crime to “gild the faces of the grooms” so as to make them seem responsible for the murder. She leaves and a knocking is heard. She returns and more knocking is heard. Just before the scene ends still more knocking. The next scene moves to the drunken Porter complaining about the knocking. After a succession of knockings at the gate he opens it and admits Macduff and Lennox.
De Quincy essay refers to two groups of murders (The Ratcliff Highway murders of 1812) allegedly committed by John Williams which was said to include a knocking at the door which made him think about Shakespeare’s knocking. He considers the murderer’s feelings during the commission of his awful deed.
But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred which will create a hell within him; and into this hell we are to look.
We were to be made to feel that the human nature, i.e., the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man was gone, vanished, extinct? and that the fiendish nature had taken its place.
Hence it is, that, when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.
To De Quincy, the knocking signifies the return from the dark world of evil to normality. He provides an explanation for the knocking that ends the murder scene and the mundane knocking that irritates the Porter, in the following scene, that goes beyond the matter of fact. His insight into the dramaturgy is believed to be the first, or one of the first, psychological interpretations of Shakespeare’s unique depiction of human behavior and motivations.
Now consider Verdi’s use of the knocking after Duncan’s murder. The knocking occurs just twice, first in triplicate and then in two pairs. They initiate the end of the first act rather than being in the second as in the play. There is no scene with the Porter who does not appear in the opera. Thus, there is no explanation for the knocking other than its dramatic effect as there is no one at the gate. Banquo and Macduff enter after the Macbeths have left. The former discovers Duncan’s corpse. The Macbeths return and feign horror at the bloody deed along with the chorus. The act ends in a glorious ensemble which captures the impact of the murder on the Scottish court and the cynicism of the evil duo responsible for the crime. Here the knocking is not a relief from murder, but rather an awful comment on it. Its effect is like a sledgehammer of doom. Too bad De Quincy never commented on the opera. He lived long enough to have attended a performance of the first version of the opera which like the second depicts the knocking.
The knocking and the finale to Act 1 powerfully conducted by Riccardo Muti are linked below. The pertinent text follows the link.
Macbeth Knocking at the gate and Act1 finale
LADY MACBETH
His spirit is trembling, struggling and raving.
Who would ever call him the unconquered man he was?
Take the knife back there.
Smear his guards with blood
so that they will be accused.
MACBETH
I go there? I cannot go back in!
LADY MACBETH
Give me the knife.
She takes the knife from Macbeth’s hands and goes into the King’s chambers. There is loud knocking at the castle gate.
MACBETH
Every noise alarms me!
Oh, this hand!
The ocean could not
wash my hands clean!
LADY MACBETH
returning
See! My hands are stained too.
A sprinkle of water and they will be c1ean again.
The deed too will pass into oblivion.
There is more knocking
MACBETH
Do you hear? They’re knocking louder.
LADY MACBETH
Come away! We must remove
all suspicion from the murderer.
Be yourself, Macbeth. Have courage!
Don’t be defeated by fear.
MACBETH
Oh, if only I could wipe my crime
from my mind!
O murdered King, if only I could
rouse you from your deep sleep.
*Lady Macbeth drags him off.
Macduff and Banquo.*
MACDUFF
The King ordered me to waken him early,
and it is already late.
Wait here for me, Banquo.
He goes into the King’s chamber.
BANQUO
Oh what an awful night!
Mourning voices were heard
in the blind air, voices of death.
The bird of ill omen moaned gloomily
and the earth was felt to shake.
MACDUFF
coming back appalled
Horror! Horror! Horror!
BANQUO
What has happened?
MACDUFF
In there,
see for yourself.
I cannot say it!
Banquo rushes into the King’s chamber
Hurry! Ho there!
Everyone come here!
Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, her Gentlewoman, Malcolm and servants all enter.
Murder! Murder!
Treason!
MACBETH and LADY MACBETH
What sudden confusion!
BANQUO
coming back, stunned
We are lost!
ALL
What is it? Speak!
What has happened?
BANQUO
King Duncan has been murdered!
ALL
Open your mouth, hell
and swallow all creation in your womb.
Heaven, let your flames fall
on the unknown, detestable murderer.
God, you can look into our hearts,
aid us, we trust in you alone.
We look to you for light and counsel
to tear through the veil of darkness.
Deadly castigator let your formidable,
ready anger take the villain
and mark his head as you marked
that of the first murderer.
De Quincy On the Knocking at the GateDownload
Verdi’s last opera Falstaff, written when he was almost 80, is opera’s greatest sport. It is unlike anything else by the composer or by anyone else, for that matter. Verdi had written all his previous with the expectation of pleasing his audiences while observing the highest artistic standards. But near the end of his life, rich, famous, and revered he decided to write one opera just for himself. Falstaff moves with the speed of a diving falcon. With one exception, it has none of the great set pieces that characterized all of Verdi’s previous works. It is this exception that is the subject of this article.
‘È sogno o realtà?’ occurs in un Act 2 scene 1. In a comedy that sparkles with wit, this monologue is darkly serious. It harkens back to the Verdi who wrote Rigoletto. Stylistically, it is in the same manner of ‘Pari siamo’ from that opera’s Act 1 scene 2. Here is the late Dmitri Hvorostovsky singing the aria. Hvorostovsky Pari siamo.
The differences between the two monologues, separated by more than 40 years, are that Rigoletto is a tragic opera while Falstaff is a broad comedy and that the older aria is sung by the title character. It’s the second baritone (Ford) who sings ‘È sogno’. If he’s good enough, he can steal the show from Falstaff. Such grand larceny happened at the Metropolitan Opera almost a century ago.
Ford is deadly serious at this juncture in the opera. He is convinced that his wife is about to make a cuckhold of him. This is no longer a comedy – at least for Ford. The only difference between the Verdi of 40 years earlier and the composer of Falstaff is that he does not allow a pause in the action such that the audience can applaud. Otherwise, the music is what you would expect from the composer of some of the greatest dramatic baritone parts in opera.
In 1925, the young American baritone, Lawrence Tibbett (1896-1960), who was only in his second season at the Met and who had never sung a role bigger than Valentin in Faust with the company was Ford opposite the Falstaff of Antonio Scotti (1866-1936). Tibbett was so good that the audience demanded he take a solo bow before they would allow the show to continue. Scotti was one of the Met’s greatest baritones. He sang with the company from 1899 to 1933. During that span he appeared in 1213 performances, the most by a leading singer of any vocal type in Met history. He was also a very generous colleague. He allowed Tibbett to sing 21 more performances as Ford with him (Scotti) in the title role. When Leonard Warren came along, Tibbett had moved up to the title role. He refused to appear with Warren saying: “I’m not going to allow him to do to me what I did to Scotti.”
Below is a photo with the two baritones shaking hands after Scotti’s farewell performance at the Met. Below the photo is an excerpt from Olin Downes review of Falstaff detailing Tibbett’s triumph as Ford. As you can see they both seem very friendly. The cigarette in Scotti mouth may explain why his retirement was brief. He died three years later.
Review from The New York Times, 1/3/1925:
AMERICAN BARITONE STIRS OPERA HOUSE
Unprecedented Scene When Lawrence Tibbett Fails to Realize He’s Made a Hit.Gets Roars of Applause
“Falstaff” Audience Demands His Appearance After His Bow With Scotti, Singing Title Role.
By Olin Downes.
The revival of Verdi’s “Falstaff,” last night in the Metropolitan Opera House, occasioned considerable excitement and was quite without precedent in the annals of the organization. The evening also produced the most brilliant performance that has been given in the opera house this season.
The Falstaff was Antonio Scotti, whose art requires no description or laurels today. The Ford was the young American Lawrence Tibbett, who last season became a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and who has since advanced very rapidly as a singer and dramatic interpreter. At the end of the second act comes the scene between Ford and Falstaff, in which Ford becomes convinced that his spouse is actually plotting infidelity, and alone on stage, intones his monologue of suspicion and jealousy, “E sogno.”
This scene Mr. Tibbett delivered with a quality of vocalism and interpretation which constituted one of the highest points, and one of the strongest individual performances of the evening. As the curtain fell the house burst into prolonged applause. In response to the applause, which kept up and increased in volume for many minutes, various of the principals appeared. Then Mr. Tibbett and Mr. Scotti appeared together and received ovations.
Audience Demands Tibbett Alone.
At last it was evident that the audience wished Mr. Tibbett and none other for its attentions. But this singer did not come before the curtain alone.
The commotion in the theatre increased. Some began to stamp, whistle and catcall. Cries of “Tibbett” came from various parts of the house. There was no response. For a while no one appeared before the curtain; the lights were lowered and Mr. Serafin, the conductor, raised his baton for the next scene to begin.
He found it impossible to proceed. Pandemonium grew. Even the elect in the boxes began to take more than a polite interest in the proceedings. The audience, justly or unjustly, had gained the impression that Mr. Tibbett was not allowed to come before them and receive their appreciation and had determined that the performance should go further until he had done so.
It was Mr. Serafin who ended the business. He sent one of the orchestra players backstage to request that Mr. Tibbett be allowed to appear. The curtains parted, the young singer stepped to the front of the stage, bowed low and repeatedly to the excited assembly, and the performance proceeded. An American audience had decided that one of its own nationality should be properly recognized for his talent, and that ended the incident.
The text of the monologue is below followed by and English translation. Boito’s archaic Italian is hard to translate. I’ve done the best I can to make some, but not all, of the obscure words recognizable in English.
I’ll, start with Tibbett’s famous rendition. It’s very good and one can easily understand why the Met’s audience was so impressed. Tibbett È sogno
Next Leonard Warren’s (1911-60) interpretation of the monologue. It’s also very god. One can also understand why Tibbett didn’t want to appear with him. Warren never did sing Ford at the Met. He did sing Falstaff with the company. Warren È sogno
Robert Merrill (1917-2004) had the perfect voice for Ford, but while he recorded the role, he never sang it onstage. His Ford from the complete recording of the opera under Georg Solti’s direction is wonderful. Merrill È sogno
George London (1920-85) was Scarpia in Tosca at the first performance I ever heard at the old Met. He was far and away the best performer of the evening. He was outstanding at everything he did – a true artist. I’m pretty sure he never sang Ford, but his recording of the aria is among the best extant. His career was cut short by vocal cord paralysis and his life by cardiovascular disease. London È sogno
Renato Capecchi ((1923-98) was an Italian baritone and opera director. He sang leading roles at the Met from 1951 to 1954. He then left the company until 1975 whereupon he sang frequently until 1994. During this second phase of his New York career he specialized in smaller roles alongside the leading roles in comic operas like Don Pasquale and The Barber. All told, he appeared 305 times at the Met. His rendition of the monologue is very effective. The Italian audience tries to applaud, but the flow of the music stiffles their efforts. Capecchi È sogno
Leo Nucci (b 1942) started out as a chorister at La Scala. He moved up to leading baritone roles a few years later. He has sung at every major house in the world. He was singing leading Verdi roles with major companies well into his 70s. Nucci È sogno
Sir Simon Keenlyside (b 1959) is a great baritone with an exceptional stage presence. This excerpt is taken from a 2018 run of the opera at the Royal Opera House in which Keenlyside was Ford opposite Bryn Terfel’s Falstaff. By comparison to some other Fords presented here, his performance is on the mild side. Nicola Luisotti’s orchestra is a bit overpowering. Keenlyside È sogno
Ludovic Tézier (b 1968) has sung at many of the world’s leading houses. He has appeared 34 times at the Met, but nothing since 2011. He was Marcello in an HD telecast of La Bohème and and Enrico in an HD Lucia. Both times I thought him ready for some of the big Verdi roles which he has performed in Europe. It appears that his Met days are over. His singing here is quite good, though a darker tone would have helped. Tézier È sogno
Quinn Kelsey (b 1978) is an American baritone who has recently assumed the big Verdi roles. I heard him as Rigoletto in Santa Fe. He was fully up to the great challenge of Verdi’s buffone. His singing of the great monologue is on the mark. Kelsey È sogno
È sogno o realtà?… Due rami enormi
Crescon sulla mia testa.
E’ un sogno? Mastro Ford!
Mastro Ford! Dormi?
Svegliati! Su! Ti desta!
Tua moglie sgarra
e mette in mal assetto
L’onore tuo, la casa ed il tuo letto!
L’ora é fissata, tramato l’inganno;
Sei gabbato e truffato!…
E poi diranno
Che un marito geloso é un insensato!
Già dietro a me nomi d’infame conio
Fischian passando;
mormora lo scherno.
O matrimonio, inferno!
Donna: Demonio!
Nella lor moglie abbian fede i babbei!
Affiderei
La mia birra a un Tedesco,
Tutto il mio desco
A un Olandese lurco,
La mia bottiglia di acquavite
a un Turco,
Non mia moglie a se stessa.
O laida sorte!
Quella brutta parola in cor mi torna:
Le corna! Bue! Capron! le fusa torte!
Ah! le corna! le corna!
Ma non mi sfuggirai! no! sozzo, reo,
Dannato epicureo!
Prima li accoppio
E poi lo colgo. Io scoppio!
Vendicherï l’affronto!
Laudata sempre sia
Nel fondo del mio cor la gelosia.
Is it dream or reality? … Two huge branches
Are spouting on my head.
Is it a dream? Master Ford!
Master Ford! Are you asleep?
Wake up! On! It awakens you!
Your wife sins
and puts up badly
Your honor, your home and your bed!
The hour is fixed, the deception is plotted;
You’re fooled and cheated! …
And then they will say
That a jealous husband is a fool!
Already behind me names of infamous coinage
Whistling;
the murmurs of mockery.
O marriage, hell!
Woman: Demon!
The suckers have faith in their wives!
I would trust
My beer to a German,
All my table
To a dirty Dutchman,
My bottle of brandy
to a Turk,
Not my wife to herself.
Or bad luck!
That ugly word in my heart comes back to me:
The horns! Ox! Capron! purred cakes!
Ah! the horns! the horns!
But you will not escape me! no! dirty, guilty,
Damned epicure!
First I’ll match them
And then I take it. I burst!
I will avenge the affront!
Praised always be
In the depths of my heart, jealousy.
Terence Blanchard’s second opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones which opened the Met’s previous season was such a hit (it will be back next season) that the company staged his first opera Champion this year. The opera tells the story of five time boxing champion Emile Griffith. Musically Blanchard’s first opera is not as good as its second, but the Met gave it such an outstanding production that it exceeded its source.
The libretto shifts between the years when Griffith was active as a fighter and his older self suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy and guilt over having killed a man in the ring. There also a part for Griffith as a boy mistreated by the woman who raised him. His birth mother, played by Latonia Moore, abandoned her seven children – all by different fathers. The young Griffith (Ryan Speedo Green) and the demented older incarnation (Eric Owens) were often onstage together.
James Robinson’s production made brilliant use of the Met’s extraordinary resources. The action moved between an elevated single room apartment that housed the elder Griffith to the downstage area that started in St Thomas and moved to Manhattan. The scenes shifted seamlessly from a factory to a ring to a Gay bar and so on. The fight scene in which Emile fatally injures Benny Paret was very well done.
The chorus and dancers were so expertly manipulated that you couldn’t easily distinguish one from the other. A panel on either side of the stage displayed black and white photographs of the fighters. Everything was done to such a standard of excellence that the absence of a single memorable tune was not readily noticeable. Blanchard has repeatedly said that Puccini is one of his favorite composers. Would that he had the Italian’s melodic gift. While there were no tunes, there was a lot of dramatically evocative music.
Green and Owen’s were superb as Griffith young and old. The former’s vocal development has been remarkable. This part was his first leading role. His potential seems unlimited. He lost 60 pounds to look like the fighter he portrayed. His singing was the best of the afternoon, though almost everyone was at their vocal best. Next season Green will have the lead in the return of Fire Shut up… and will be Escamillo in the company’s run of Carmen. Owens was affecting as the failing Emile. His part is written such that wobble that his characterized his recent appearances was not noticable.
Latonia Moore who inhabits every part she sings was fine as Emile’s wayward mother. Her voice was a little freer in the second act than at the opera’s start. Stephanie Blythe was appropriately rough and tumble as the propiatress of a gay bar that Emile frequents.
Chauncey Parker was sympathetic as older Emile’s stepson and caregiver. Paul Groves’ voice was on the dry side, though he was still effective as Emile’s manager. Eric Greene in his debut roles as Paret senior and junior was so buff that he could have challenged Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Vocally he was a little unsteady. Lee Wilkof in the speaking role of the Ring Announcer was particularly on target. The rest of the cast were all excellent.
The Met’s music director,Yannick Nézet-Séguin, welded a very strong performance from the large ensemble needed to stage this boxing opera. The jazz quartet in the pit blended seamlessly with the Met’s orchestra. The pixieish maestro was appropriately dressed in a workout costume complete with a hood. The production was so good that, as I intimated above, it surpassed the material it represented.
How well this opera will play when given by a company without the Met’s extravagant resources is difficult to gauge. I suspect it won’t be able to sustain itself on a lesser platform. Regardless, it’s definitely worth a trip to the theater to catch the replay if you missed the live show.
Metropolitan Opera House
April 29, 2023
CHAMPION
Terence Blanchard – Michael Cristofer
Young Emile Griffith…………Ryan Speedo Green
Emile Griffith………………Eric Owens
Emelda Griffith……………..Latonia Moore
Luis Rodrigo Griffith………..Chauncey Packer
Howie Albert………………..Paul Groves
Benny “Kid” Paret……………Eric Greene
Benny Paret, Jr……………..Eric Greene
Little Emile………………..Ethan Joseph
Kathy Hagen…………………Stephanie Blythe
Man in Bar………………….Edward Nelson
Sadie Donastorg Griffith……..Brittany Renee
Ring Announcer………………Lee Wilkof
Cousin Blanche………………Krysty Swann
Lucia Paret…………………Helena Brown
Mano Alfaro…………………Tshombe Selby
Orchestra Rhythm Section:
Piano………………………Bryan Wagorn
Bass……………………….Matt Brewer
Guitar……………………..Adam Rogers
Drums………………………Jeff “Tain” Watts
Conductor…………………..Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production………………….James Robinson
Set Designer………………..Allen Moyer
Costume Designer…………….Montana Levi Blanco
Lighting Designer……………Donald Holder
Projection Designer………….Greg Emetaz
Choreographer……………….Camille A. Brown
Video Director………….Gary Halvorson
Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, very loosely based of Part1 of Goethe’s Faust, was once so frequently performed that its constant presence at New York’s Metropolitan Opera caused the house to be derisively dubbed the Faustspielhaus. Today the opera, while still performed is not as frequent a visitor at the world’s lyric theaters as it was a generation ago, or more.
It doesn’t even make the top 30 of operas performed today. Faust was the opera that opened the Met’s first season in 1883. Today, it’s been 10 years since the company last performed the piece. As far as I know, there’s no plan to bring back Gounod’s masterpiece in the upcoming seasons. And there’s no question, at least in my mind, that it is a masterpiece. It has three great parts for soprano, tenor, and bass.
The baritone has a lesser role, but he gets to sing a bravura aria that Gounod added to the opera for the great English baritone Charles Santley. Gounod took a theme from the prelude and made it into ‘Even the bravest heart may swell’. The aria was so good that it remained in the opera as ‘Avant de quitter ces lieux’ for subsequent French productions of the work. The opera even has a great chorus.
So why the neglect? I can’t come up with a good reason for the opera’s current relative neglect. Among French operas there are only a few that are in it class or better. Carmen, of course, reigns supreme. The Tales of Hoffmann, unfinished as it is, is probably better – but not by much. Belioz’ Benvenuto Cellini and The Trojans are special cases that will appeal more to musicians than to audiences, though Cellini is a captivating effort.
What’s not to like in Gounod’s setting of a scholar’s search for immortality and love set awry by the devil himself? As is true for any staged production, spoken or sung, if Satan (in any of his guises) is part of the ensemble – he’ll take over the action. In Faust, Méphistophélès gets to chew the scenery while performing wicked miracles and tormenting Marguerite in a cathedral. This scene shows that Gounod could do more than write pretty tunes, it has real dramatic impact.
All of this waxing is a prelude to my insertion of the conclusion of the opera from a renowned recording of the opera made almost 70 years ago. Nicolai Gedda is Faust, Victoria de los Angeles sings Marguerite, and the great Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff is a menacing devil. The scene is set in in a jail cell. Marguerite is imprisoned for murdering the child she had by Faust. He offers to rescue her, but she refuses putting her trust in God and His angels (‘Anges purs, anges radieux’). Méphistophélès condemns her, but a heavenly voice proclaims her salvation. Her soul rises to heaven while Faust remains in the cell stuck with the devil.
The trio is one of opera’s finest and the celestial music that follows makes for an evocative ending of the five act opera. This fine example of French romanticism is too good to stay on the shelf indefinitely. The Met will doubtless bring it back before too long.
Faust Act 5 finale
When I arrived at the theater where I have been watching the Met’s HD telecasts since they started about 17 years ago I was informed that the theater’s sound system had failed and accordingly the show would not go on – at least not where I was. I returned home in time to catch the radio broadcast. Obviously, I can’t comment on the production, but it’s the same one that was telecast in 2017. You can read about Robert Carsen’s staging here. I don’t know if the elephantine nonsense of the original production remains in the current revival. If it’s still there, this is a show better heard than seen.
A few remarks on the current revival of Strauss’ masterpiece. Two of the principals in this run were in the 2017 staging. Soprano Erin Morley was even better today as the teenage Sophie. Her high soprano was lustrous and she phrased her singing with elegance and sensitivity. Günther Groissböck was again the bumptious rustic nobleman Ochs. He has the part down pat and once again did not overplay his part.
Lise Davidsen has been causing a stir at the Met. She’s sung Tchaikovsky and Wagner at the New York house in addition to Strauss. Next season she’s going to add Verdi to her Met list when she sings the Forza Leonora. This season’s Rosenkavalier at the Met was her first go at Strauss’ chronologically challenged princess. Her Marschallin was beautifully sung though her interpretation will certainly grow with repetition. She not yet at the level of her illustrious predecessor in the role, Renée Fleming, but she’s off to a good start.
The American mezzo Samantha Hankey was Octavian, the 17 year old nobleman who trades in the 32 year old princess for a 15 year old rich commoner. Their liaison doubtless would not last very long as Octavian was sure to find another princess before too much time had past. Ms Hankey was in outstanding voice and carried her part in the glorious trio and duet that ends the opera with distinction. A young singer on the rise.
Maestra Simone Young had last conducted at the Met in 1998. She led a vigorous yet nuanced performance of Strauss’ marvellous score. Why she’s been gone for so long is hard to fathom. Young is currently the chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – her hometown band. She was so good and in such command of the music that I hope the Met brings her back soon.
The army of supporting players, at least the ones that made a sound, were all first rate. If I hadn’t already seen this production, I’d go to the encore – assuming that my local theater has the sound ship righted.
Metropolitan Opera House
April 15, 2023
DER ROSENKAVALIER
Richard Strauss-Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
Octavian………………..Samantha Hankey
Princess von Werdenberg……Lise Davidsen
Baron Ochs……………….Günther Groissböck
Sophie…………………..Erin Morley
Faninal………………….Brian Mulligan
Annina…………………..Katharine Goeldner
Valzacchi………………..Thomas Ebenstein
Italian Singer……………René Barbera
Marianne…………………Alexandra LoBianco
Mahomet………………….Billy Conahan
Princess’ Major-domo………Spencer Hamlin
Lackey…………………..Marco Antonio Jordão
Lackey…………………..Ross Benoliel
Lackey…………………..Patrick Miller
Lackey…………………..Jonathan Scott
Orphan…………………..Lianne Coble-Dispensa
Orphan…………………..Mary K. Hughes
Orphan…………………..Christina Thomson Anderson
Milliner…………………Anne Nonnemacher
Animal Vendor…………….Dustin Lucas
Hairdresser………………Jonathan Amaro
Notary…………………..Bradley Garvin
Leopold………………….Patrick Stoffer
Faninal’s Major-domo………Corey Bix
Innkeeper………………..Tony Stevenson
Waiter…………………..Thomas Capobianco
Waiter…………………..Daniel Rich
Waiter…………………..Paul Corona
Waiter…………………..Christopher Job
Police Commissioner……….Scott Conner
Widow……………………Sidney Fortner
Doctor…………………..Frank Colardo
Conductor………………..Simone Young
Production……………….Robert Carsen
Set Designer……………..Paul Steinberg
Costume Designer………….Brigitte Reiffenstuel
Lighting Designer…………Robert Carsen
Lighting Designer…………Peter Van Praet
Choreographer…………….Philippe Giraudeau
Stage Director……………Paula Suozzi
This evening the Met will present its first performance of Terence Blanchard’s opera Champion about the life of boxer Emile Griffith. The leading role will be sung by Ryan Speedo Green whose life story is worthy of its own opera. It’s already been the subject of a book – Sing For Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family by Daniel Bergner. Written in 2016, it tells the story of Green’s trip from from poverty, abuse, anger, violence, and imprisonment to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. It’s a tale more improbable than the wildest libretto.
Born in Suffolk Virginia in 1986 he was given the middle name of Speedo by his father after the maker of the eponymous swim briefs. His father was a bodybuilder and wore the briefs. He also disappeared when Ryan was four. He ran off with family’s babysitter. Frequently beaten by his mother, he tried to stab her when he was 12. Before that he had been thrown out of four preschool day care centers for violent and disruptive behavior.
In handcuffs and leg irons he was taken to the DeJarnette Center for Human Development. The center was the last stop for unmanageable children. Named for a racist eugenicist (it’s since been renamed), Green’ behavior there was violent, verbally threatening; he was frequently placed in solitary confinement. He stayed at the center for two years after which he was mysteriously released back to the custody of his mother who had sent him there to begin with. His relationship with his mother remains difficult to this day. His father reappeared and they re-established a connection. When Cecil, his father, died suddenly from a heart attack Green was shaken. When his half brother told him that Cecil didn’t think Green was his son, he was upset, but came to believe that he was Cecil’s con no matter what his father thought.
Bergner’s technique is to switch between Green’s attempt to learn the basics and then the nuances of opera starting from a beginning where he had a voice, but no knowledge of how to read music or to pronounce any of the languages in which opera is written and then back to his tortured childhood. This stylistic device works well enough, though I don’t think it adds much to a simple telling of the singer’s story in strict chronological order. It does, however, allow a break from the horrors of his early years.
The inevitable question Green’s story raises is how does a person overcome a childhood that would irreversibly maim just about anyone to become a star at the Met, an institution as removed from black poverty as can be imagined? The answer to this question is inevitably complex.
He had several teachers during his violent phase who saw something in him and were patient enough to allow him to grow away, albeit slowly, from violence and debilitating anger. He entered a school for talented students where he spent half of his day – The Governor’s School in Norfolk. He made a white friend with whom he spent a lot of time and from whose family he learned a lot. His school took him to New York where he heard a performance of Carmen with Denyce Graves in the title role. After hearing the Toreador Song he proclaimed that he wanted to sing at the Met. He listened to the radio and worked on his English pronunciation. Inevitably, he was called an Oreo by both blacks and whites.
He was taken under the tutelage of Robert Brown a pianist and voice teacher who instructed him without fee. He even drove him back and forth from the trailer park in which he lived – 45 minutes each way. Brown and Alan Fischer the chairman of the vocal music department at Governor’s helped him get a scholarship at the University of Hartford. He subsequently got a Master in Music degree from Florida State University. Sadly, Brown died shortly thereafter from AIDS
Despite the two degrees, his knowledge of singing and languages was woefully inadequate to meet the demands of opera. Despite his vocal inadequacy, the potential of his bass-baritone voice was enough for him to be one of five winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He was then accepted into the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. His progress was laborious, but real and steady. The Met offered him a contract after he finished the Lindemann Program and then the Vienna State Opera did the same. Thus, far he has sung small and medium parts at these two great companies. Tonight’s production of Champion will be his first starring role at the Met.
Green is now married and the father of a son. A major career in a very difficult profession seems to be his. So what about the question raised above. How did he do it? The answer is not entirely knowable. Green’s success against the longest of odds is due to the combination of persistence, character, hard work, the assistance of key figures in his life, and that most elusive and important aspect of life – good luck.
Robert Carsen’s production of Verdi’s valedictory masterpiece Falstaff was first telecast by the Met in December 2013. It returned today with a new cast. Verdi’s last work for the stage is an operatic sport. There is no work in the canon like it. Its melodic fecundity, mercury-like pace, vocal ingenuity, and its deep insight into human behavior make it unique. Verdi’s other operas are lush and couched in primary colors. Falstaff is made of icy steel and needs a razor’s edge to make its impact.
Carsen chose to set the action in 1950 instead of Elizabethan England. This unnecessary temporal shift did not detract from the show save that it deprived Falstaff of the outrageous outfit he typically wears when he sets out with Ford, disguised as Fontana, to woo Alicia in Act 2. In this production he wears red hunting apparel.
The renowned German baritone Michael Volle portrayed the titular aging knight with ample voice and a gentle mien. The 63 year old baritone’s voice is still strong and up to any vocal challenge. If Ambrogio Maestri’s impersonation of Shakespeare/Verdi’s archetypical comic hero is not imbedded in your memory, Volle’s interpretation would seem quite good. Though comparisons can be unfair, Volle’s depiction alongside that of his Italian colleague seems a sketch. Falstaff says that it is he who drives the action of all around him. So it was in this performance which, like its protagonist, was good without being memorable.
Falstaff is an ensemble opera; each of it roles has substance and accordingly requires considerable musical and dramatic quality from its protagonists. The two Windsor wives – Ailyn Pérez as Alicia and Jennifer Johnson Cano as Meg were fine, though Ms Pérez’s sound was a little shrill in Act 1.
Dame Quickly is a great character role for a mezzo. Marie-Nicole Lemieux camped the role a little more than I cared for, though the audience seemed taken by her performance. She seemed to me more interested in show than depth of character.
Christopher Maltman was Ford, one of opera’s juiciest secondary baritone roles. ‘È sogno o realtà?’, Ford’ monologue in Act 2 drops all comedic trappings and lets Verdi, just for a few minutes, be the composer of Rigoletto. Maltman sang the aria well save a few strained top notes. This is such a powerful number that the baritone who sings it can steal the show from Falstaff as Lawrence Tibbett did to Antonio Scotti almost a century ago.
The two lovers, Fenton and Nannetta were very well sung by tenor Bogdan Volkov and soprano Hera Hyesang Park. Both were particularly effective in the opera’s last scene. Volkov has a firm lyric tenor that he used with grace in a part that is very hard to fully realize. Park’s voice is lovely and was particularly fine when she was pretending to be the Fairy Queen.
Chauncey Packer and Richard Bernstein were appropriately antic as Falstaff’s longtime sidekicks, though they were too young to have been with the fat knight for 30 years as specified by Falstaff himself.
Falstaff is a conductor’s opera. The intricate ensemble passages for as many as nine voices did not come off with the elan that is built into them. Maestro Daniele Rustioni got the usual fine playing from the Met’s orchestra, but the excitement and force that is built into the score were not fully realized. Still a good go at a great opera.
The video director was Habib Azar. I think this was the first telecast from the Met directed by him. His work was unobtrusive, which means it was very good. He’s not given to microscopic closeups.
In summary, this was a good performance of an opera that requires a lot from cast and conductor. It’s a work that gains from frequent hearings as Verdi put so much into it that only repeated exposure uncovers all its wonderful inventions. Good enough to warrant a visit to the encore broadcast if you missed the live performance.
Metropolitan Opera House
April 1, 2023
*FALSTAFF*
Giuseppe Verdi–Arrigo Boito
Sir John Falstaff…….Michael Volle
Alice Ford…………..Ailyn Pérez
Ford………………..Christopher Maltman
Dame Quickly…………Marie-Nicole Lemieux
Nannetta…………….Hera Hyesang Park
Fenton………………Bogdan Volkov
Meg Page…………….Jennifer Johnson Cano
Dr. Caius……………Carlo Bosi
Bardolfo…………….Chauncey Packer
Pistola……………..Richard Bernstein
Conductor……………Daniele Rustioni
Production…………..Robert Carsen
Set Designer…………Paul Steinberg
Costume Designer……..Brigitte Reiffenstuel
Lighting Designer…….Robert Carsen
Lighting Designer…….Peter Van Praet
Stage Director……….Gina Lapinski
Video Director………..Habib Azar
Wagner’s most performed opera, Lohengrin, returned to the Met this season after hiatus of 17 years. It is also the only Wagner opera we know for certain that Verdi saw in performance. This was on November 9, 1871 in Bologna. He left detailed notes on his impression of the work. The Bologna production was the first in Italy for any Wagner opera.
The subject here is the end of Act 1. Frederick of Telramund has accused Elsa of killing her brother the Duke of Brabant. King Henry the Fowler decrees the matter to be settled by trial by combat. Elsa needing a champion to fight on her behalf prays to God for such a hero. Lohengrin appears in a boat drawn by a swan. He agrees to defend her honor provided she never asks his name or history. She agrees – for now.
Lohengrin easily defeats Telramund and even spares his life. To have done otherwise would have ended the opera after just one act. This excerpt starts with the combat. The first line after the brief bout is “Durch Gottes Sieg ist jetzt dein Leben mein.” (Through God’s victory your life is now mine.) Taking Elsa by the hand, he declares her innocent. The crowd exits, cheering and celebrating – everybody except Frederick and his wife Ortrud. The cast in this recording is headed by Placido Domingo and Jessye Norman – Georg Solti conducts.
Lohengrin Act 1 finale
On April 22 the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra will perform Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 1. The soloist will be Cliburn winner Kenny Bromberg. He will be joined by trumpeter Will Strider. The second half of the evening’s program will present Rodion Shchedrin’s adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen For String Orchestra and Percussion. Tickets can be purchased at the site linked above.
The program notes I wrote for the concert are below. I have added a few links to them to illustrate some of the music mentioned in them.
Shostakovich Piano Concerto #1
The career of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) can be divided into two halves – before and after Stalin. The Piano Concerto #1 belongs to the first half. This was the time when he was the boy wonder who produced music of boundless energy, when his world seemed limitless, and his creativity was unfettered.
Admitted to the Petrograd Conservatory when he was 13, Shostakovich was trained to be both a composer and a virtuoso pianist. When he was 19 his First Symphony, written as a graduation piece, was premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra to great acclaim. He was a force in Russian music from that point until the end of his life.
He hoped to be a pianist composer like Rachmaninov and Prokoviev. He was selected to be one of the Soviet contestants in the inaugural Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927. He advanced to the finals, but did not win a medal. This disappointing result caused him, to doubt his future as a performer.
Focusing on composition he stopped concertizing after 1930, except for performing his own works. He began his First Piano Concerto in March of 1933. He had already finished his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, though it had yet to be performed. It was the opera that triggered a near lethal reaction from Stalin after he saw it in 1936, two years after its successful premiere.
The concerto started out as one for trumpet, but gradually morphed into a piano concerto with a prominent, but secondary part for trumpet. First performed in October 1933 with the composer as soloist, it was an immediate hit and revitalized Shostakovich’s performing career. He was repeatedly invited to perform it across Russia. It rapidly became part of the standard piano concerto repertory and has remained such to this day.
The concerto is a bundle of jokes, parodies, quotations, and dynamism. Shostakovich was one of music’s great quoters. In this work it’s hard to keep up with all the quotations. But they are so seamlessly integrated into the work that even if you miss them the piece still works. Some are so disguised that they’re only revealed by repeated listening.
The concerto is a wild parody on the great romantic concertos of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. Shostakovich’s models are the leading modernists of a century ago – Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Hindemith, and Ravel. The quotations derive from his love of Mahler – also addicted to musical quotations.
The musical references include Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata, the composer’s incidental music for Hamlet, the Austrian folk song ‘O du lieber Augustin’, Haydn’s Piano Sonata in D, the folk tune ‘Poor Mary’, a wild sendup of Beethoven’s Rage Over a Lost Penny which includes the beginning of the famous Al Jolson song ‘California Here I Come’. There are more. That Shostakovich could make a coherent whole out of this thematic hodgepodge is a mark of his genius.
The concerto is in four movements rather than the usual three, though the third is very short and serves as an introduction to the finale. The second movement, marked lento, abandons zaniness for its duration. In ABA form, it is a dreamy waltz. The use of the trumpet when the initial theme returns is especially effective. It is an island of restrained beauty before the wackiness of the final movement takes over. Shortly after the concerto’s premiere, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was staged to great acclaim. For two years it was widely performed throughout the Soviet Union, then in 1936 Stalin attended a performance and was offended by everything in the opera. Two days later ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ was published in Pravda. Shostakovich’s life changed forever. Thereafter he kept a packed suitcase by his door to have handy when he was arrested. Though frequently denounced he never was jailed. Henceforth, he was still a great composer, but of a different temperament.
Carmen Suite
Rodion Shchedrin (b 1932) is a Russian composer and pianist with a large body of work in a variety of genres. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, he has divided his time between Munich and Moscow. His best known work is an unusual adaptation of Bizet’s opera Carmen. The genesis and performance of this adaptation is connected to Shostakovich both before and after its composition.
Shchedrin’s wife was the great ballerina Maya Plisetskaya (1925-2015), the prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi Theater. In 1964 she asked Shostakovich to compose a ballet for her based on Carmen. He refused explaining that the opera was so good and so well known that no matter what he produced the public would be disappointed. He suggested that she approach the composer she was married to.
She went instead to Aram Khachaturian the composer of the ballets Gayane and Spartacus who also suggested that Shchedrin was the man for the job. Before Shchedrin began composing the ballet, Plisetskaya had worked with the Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso. He worked out a libretto and dance moves for the ballet.
Alonso went to Moscow to teach Plisetskaya the ballet. Shchedrin observed the process and realized that he needed more than a simple adaptation of Bizet’s music. He had to be more than an arranger.
He came up with the bold idea of using only a string orchestra and an enlarged percussion section. He rearranged the order of the music from its appearance in the opera, mixed melodies from different numbers, and included some music from Bizet’s incidental music to L’Arlésienne and his opera La Jolie Fille de Perthe.
The ballet ran into a lot of trouble with the Soviet Minister of Culture, but it finally was staged after Shostakovich intervened on its behalf. While the ballet is occasionally performed, Shchedrin’s score lives on in the concert hall where it has proved to be a big hit. It has also been recorded many times.
Arranged for strings, timpani, and four percussionists it consists of 13 sections that rearrange and expand on Bizet’s music. Themes are interwoven and combined. In the ninth part of the suite, the famous Toreador Song is layered with the fate motif that predicts the story’s grim conclusion. This effect adds new meaning to the great piece. The unexpected sudden hesitations are resolved when the section ends with a full out playing of the great tune. The fate motif also appears in the third section – “The changing of the guard.”
The twists and turns of the score add piquancy to the familiar music. Predictably, some critics were offended by Shchedrin’s reworking of a classic. But the audience, the ultimate critic, has decreed the work a unique addition to Bizet’s masterpiece confirming Shchedrin’s declaration that his work was “A meeting of the minds” between him and Bizet. Shchedrin had achieved the rarest of artistic feats – a masterpiece based on a masterpiece.
The four percussionists, who with timpanist and string orchestra perform the work, play the instruments below:
Player 1: marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, castanets, three cowbells, four bongos, tubular bells, snare drum, guiro
Player 2: vibraphone, marimba, snare drum, tambourine, two woodblocks, claves, triangle, guiro
Player 3: glockenspiel, crotales, maracas, whip, snare drum, cabasa, guiro, three temple blocks, bass drum, tam-tam, tenor drum, triangle
Player 4: cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, hi-hat, triangle, tambourine, five tom-toms
Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is now a standard in the operatic repertory. In 1950 a complete performance of the opera was hard to find. The best known songs from the work were often done as recital pieces or on recordings. The Met didn’t mount its first production of the opera until 1985.
In 1950 two Met stars, Risë Stevens and Robert Merrill, recorded eight numbers from the opera. It had little impact on the public and was quickly forgotten. But it’s still around if you look hard enough for it. Recorded under the direction of Robert Russell Bennett with the Robert Shaw Chorale its worth a serious listen because of the singing of Merrill.
The baritone was one of the best of the last century. But on this recording he sounds like the best ever. He was in such glorious voice when he made this recording that the entire contents of it are linked below. Stevens is fine, but the recording belongs to Merrill. No matter that he never would have sung it onstage as part of a complete performance of the opera or that one might quibble about interpretative issues – it’s the sheer beauty of Merrill’s voice that merits attention more than 70 years after the recording was made that keeps it alive and vital.
Songs from Porgy and Bess
Summertime
A woman is a sometime thing
Gone, gone, gone
My man’s gone now
I got plenty o nuttin’
Bess, you is my woman now
It ain’t necessarily so
Where is my Bess
Risë Stevens, mezzo
Robert Merrill, baritone
Robert Shaw Chorale
RCA Victor Orchestra
Robert Russell Bennett
Wagner’s most popular opera returned to the Met this season after an absence of almost 17 years. This new production was directed by François Girard with sets and costume by Tim Yip. The staging uses stark walls and a circular device through which moved a succession of moons. Stars dominated the third act. The choristers wore magnet controlled costumes that displayed robes with white, green, or red linings that were supposed to reflect the dominant mood at the time they were exposed. It was a clever idea that was overused, It was frankly tiresome by the opera’s end. Having some of the choristers march off stage in Act 2 with the their necks so arched they looked more like roosters than opera performers added inappropriate mirth. The rest of the sets were dark structures that were serviceable though they gave no hint as to what they were to represent. As a whole the production was adequate at suggesting a time in early European history when Christianity was finally replacing paganism. Alas, though often mentioned the opera’s famous swan was a directorial casualty. He (I think) was canceled, though there was a hint of white wings at the opera’s end.
The production was savaged by the New York critics. While it’s not the best work to appear on the Met’s august platform it got the job done with little that was offensive and did not distract from the performance. A gentleman’s C, to use an archaic reference.
Lohengrin is the Wagner opera that often attracts an Italianate tenor to sing the title role. The Polish tenor Piotr Beczala has sung mostly Italian roles since his debut with at the Met in 2006. Clad in a white shirt with rolled cuffs and dark pants he looked like he was about to give everyone a menu. As the knight on a mission he was a model of composure and dignity. His singing was lovely and elegantly phrased. While not a heldentenor, he had the power required for a role that focuses on the tenor’s midrange. He also managed the part’s delicate and quiet passages. He sounded just as fresh at the opera’s end as he did at its start. As always, he looked and acted as though he were 20 years younger than his 56 years. A fine performance by a fine artist.
The opera’s best known aria, In fernem land’, was sung by Beczala with grace end effortless phrasing.
Tamara Wilson was Elsa. The maiden falsely accused of murdering her brother. He had been transformed into the missing swan by the sorceress Ortrud before the opera’s beginning. He magically appeared as a blond aryan god at the opera’s conclusion. Elsa is the girl who has to ask the question she’s promised not to – namely what’s Lohengrin’s name and history. It’s politically incorrect to have a heroine who is a silly nitwit. Wilson’s soprano is at turns steely, edgy, luminous, and pretty good. She didn’t inhabit her part as did Beczala. The love duet which precedes the fatal question seemed devoid of passion.
Christine Goerke was the vengeful sorceress Ortrud. She has all the Wagnerian power needed for the witch who’s not giving up against the new order without a fight. While her voice was up to the demand’s of the fierce part her acting was out of a silent movie. Lots of sinuous and twisted gestures.
He partner in evil, Telramund, was portrayed by Evgeny Nikitin who gave an vocally colorless performance that lacked sufficient menace. Brian Mulligan was the Herald with a clear and well placed voice. King Heinrich was very well sung by Günther Groesbeck who has mastered that technique of singing out of the right side of his mouth.
The chorus has a large part in this opera. There seemed to be enough of them to repel the Hungarian invasion mentioned in Act 1. When not fusing with magnets they sang very well.
Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin led a compelling performance of Wagner’s brilliant and nuanced score. He realized all of its power and beauty. Of course, anything by Wagner has its longueurs, but much of the score is inspired explaining its popularity. Definitely worth catching the repeat or going to the Met if you’re in New York.
Metropolitan Opera House
March 18, 2023
LOHENGRIN
Wagner-Wagner
Lohengrin……………..Piotr Beczala
Elsa………………….Tamara Wilson
Ortrud………………..Christine Goerke
Telramund……………..Evgeny Nikitin
King Heinrich………….Günther Groesbeck
Herald………………..Brian Mulligan
Gottfried……………..Andrew Spriggs
Noble…………………Errin Duane Brooks
Noble…………………Thomas Capobianco
Noble…………………Anthony Clark Evans
Noble…………………Stefan Egerstrom
Page………………….Catherine MiEun Choi-Steckmeyer
Page………………….Andrea Coleman
Page………………….Alexa Jarvis
Page………………….Anne Nonnemacher
Conductor……………..Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production…………….François Girard
Set and Costume Designer…..Tim Yip
Lighting Designer………David Finn
Projection Designer…….Peter Flaherty
Choreographer…………..Serge Bennathan
Dramaturg……………..Serge Lamothe
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson
Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece has returned to the Met with Sonya Yoncheva in the title role. American tenor Michael Spyres sang the Roman proconsul Pollione. Adalgisa was performed by Ekaterina Gubanova. The entire cast is below. The show was broadcast last night on the SiriusXm network, so this is just a recount of the singing independent of the mise-en-scène.
Norma depends on glorious singing to make its full effect. As a complete work of art it’s inferior to the other great bel canto tragic opera – Lucia di Lammermoor which has been performed 620 times by the Met compared to just 171 shows for the Bellini opera. If you don’t have a glorious cast, keep Norma in the library. It’s extraordinary melodies deserve only the finest singing.
Not only were the Met’s current singers not glorious, they weren’t even very good. Yoncheva has the wrong instrument for the Druid priestess. Her sound lacks the Italianate bite and edge needed as well as the soaring legato. To add to this lack was that she wasn’t even at her best. ‘Casta diva’ received tepid applause and its cabaletta none at all. The runs were sloppy and her voice wobbled when she went above the staff. She should retire the role.
Why the Met thought Russian mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova was up to the rigors of Adalgisa is mysterious. Her sound was wooly and hard to distinguish from that of Yoncheva. The glorious duets between the two were dully sloughed through. Neither is comfortable with fioratura.
Michael Spyres has been lighting up the opera stages of Europe for close to a decade. His eventual Met appearance was anticipated with enthusiasm. Alas, after three roles he has disappointed his audience in all three. Last evening his voice was strained, colorless, and produced with effort. If you had heard him away from the Met, you would think a different singer had appropriated his name. He’s not on the Met roster for next season and I would be surprised if he ever returns.
Speaking of next season at the Met, it appears to me to be the blandest in memory. But that’s just an opinion. Others may find excitement in what seems like musical pablum to me. The audience will decide.
Back to Norma. When the finest work of a performance of Bellini’s collection of long long long melodies emanates from the conductor – Maurizio Benini – you’ve got the measure of the show. The company is in a ditch at present. There aren’t enough great singers to fill its calendar so it makes do with performances at a provincial level, not at the height expected from the world’s most renowned opera company. You can miss this run of Norma through the rest of March.
Metropolitan Opera House
March 8, 2023
NORMA
Vincenzo Bellini
Norma……………….Sonya Yoncheva
Pollione…………….Michael Spyres
Adalgisa…………….Ekaterina Gubanova
Oroveso……………..Christian Van Horn
Clotilde…………….Brittany Olivia Logan
Flavio………………Yongzhao Yu
Child……………….Adam Berman
Child……………….David Berman
Conductor……………Maurizio Benini
Production…………..David McVicar
Set Designer…………Robert Jones
Costume Designer……..Moritz Junge
Lighting Designer……Paule Constable
Movement Director……..Leah Hausman
Revival Stage Director…Eric Sean Fogel
Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci have been paired more often than Southwest Airlines has had recent on time flights. The two leading Italian style tenors at the Metropolitan Opera who sang the leading roles in these operas during the 1960s were Franco Corelli and Richard Tucker.
Both had virile spinto tenors that brought skill and excitement to everything they sang. That the Met could repeatedly cast them on the same bill speaks for both the artistic and financial heft that the house had at that time. Money aside, I don’t think any company today could find two active tenors of their quality a place onstage for the same show.
They often appeared on the double bill of Cav & Pag. The 1964 pairing was conducted by Nello Santi. This is the one with Tucker as Turiddu and Corelli as the cuckold clown Canio. In 1970 Leonard Bernstein led the Cavalleria performance, while Pagliacci was conducted by Fausto Cleva. Here, as indicated above, the two superstar tenors switched roles.
Eileen Farrell and Lucine Amara were the sopranos on the earlier recording, while Grace Bumbry and Teresa Stratas were the female leads on the 1970 performance. The full casts are given in the folders below where the operas are available for listening or downloading.
As an intro here’s Vesti la giubba from both shows:
Corelli – Vesti la giubba 1964
Tucker – Vesti la giubba 1970
Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci 1964
CavalleriaRusticana and Pagliacci 1970
The life of Lina Bruna Rasa (1907-84) is one of opera’s saddest tales. A phenom, she made her debut in 1925 at age 18. Her last performance was in 1942 when she was 34. She was one year younger than Zinka Milanov, yet the two sopranos seem of different eras. Milanov sang at the Met until 1966. Her peak years were the early 50s.
Bruna Rasa was born in 1907 in Padua where she began vocal studies at age 14. By the time she was 19 Toscanini had engaged her to sing Elena in Boito’s Mefistofele at La Scala. She soon was singing all over Europe and in Egypt and South America. Mascagni conducted her as Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana in the Piazza San Marco in Venice before a crowd of 35,000 people. She became his favorite impersonator of the role. He chose her for the recording of the opera to mark its 50th anniversary. Beniamino Gigli was Turiddu.
Her personality was always a bit odd. Her mental problems became more severe after the death of her mother. By the time of her Cav recording in 1940 she was hallucinating. She seemed fine when singing, but drifted away with the music. She had multiple admissions to santitoriums. Her last performance was in 1942 at the outdoor arena in Pesaro. She spent the last 36 years of her life in a mental institution in Milan. What should have been one of opera’s greatest careers was obliterated by mental illness.
I can only guess as to what her diagnosis was; but a reasonable theory would be that she suffered from chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia. It’s an outdated term, but it still conveys meaning. Regardless of what was afflicting Bruna Rasa, it ended her productive life.
When listening to her recording, note that the early ones made when she was barely into her 20s show a rich dark sound that is capable of great dynamic flexibility, but which also has a very rapid vibrato that some may find off putting. Her later recording show that she had completely put the vibrato in its proper place. Remember, that this was singer who was mute after age 34.
In quelle trine morbida from Act 2 of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut displays the singer’s vocal flutter in full flight. It has much to admire, but it can’t compare to Rosa Ponselle’s recording of the same aria made just a few years earlier. As far as I can tell the only Puccini opera in Bruna Rasa’s repertoire was Tosca.
Giordano’s Andrea Chenier was was opera Bruna Rasa performed on stage. La mamma morta is from Act 2. This was another early recording made when the singer was 21.
Two selections from Boito’s Mefistofele. L’altra notte in fondo al mare is from the start of Act 3. Margareta has been imprisoned for the death of the mother and infant child. Spunta l’aurora pallida is from the same act. It is Margareta’s reaction Faust’s arrival in her cell and her horror at seeing Mefistofele. A celestial choir proclaims her redemption as the act ends.
As mentioned above, Tosca was a role Bruna Rasa sang in the opera house. Vissi d’arte needs no further comment.
The remaining excerpts were recorded later and show the voice in its full glory. The duet between Amonasro and Aida in the third Act of Verdi’s opera was made with the noted baritone Carlo Galeffi. Ciel mio padre
Finally two selection from her most famous role – Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. First the aria Voi lo sapete in which Santuzza tells Mamma Lucia about her fling with Turiddu and its inevitable consequence. Then the blazing duet with Turiddu in which he refuses her entreaties to return to her. Beniamino Gigli is the tenor and Giulietta Simionato is Lola. Later her career Simionato assumed the role of Santuzza. I heard her do it at the old Met. She was terrific. The composer conducts.
The gifted young soprano was the victim of another of life’s cruel and seemingly random thunderbolts. A career that should have lasted until the 60s was crushed by madness. The universe is vast and our understanding virtually without foundation. Ripeness is all.
Umberto Giordano’s minor league opera Fedora was brought back to the Met after an absence of 25 years. The main reason for its reappearance, as far as I could, tell was to add novelty without the aural pain that the Met’s commitment to new operas has recently inflicted on its audience and box office. If you are going to resurrect as slight a work as Giordano’s potboiler you’d better take it seriously and give it as strong a production as possible. With one minor exception the Met treated the opera as if it were a masterpiece.
David McVicar’s new production played it straight. The sets and costumes (by Charles Edwards and Brigitte Reiffenstuel, respectively) were time and place appropriate. It likely took all of McVicar’s directorial fortitude to avoid placing the action in a 21st century Calcutta barrio. Act 1 was in St Petersburg, Act 2 in Paris, and the last act in the Swiss alps. The costumes and decor were splendid; they looked like they belonged in an opera. The only misstep was to have Fedora’s dead fiance hang around for the opera after his demise in Act 1. The ghost served no purpose beyond distraction.
Giordano’s score has one really good tune – ‘Amor di vieta’ and it only lasts a minute. When things bog down the composer brings back the tune as he seems unable to conjure another one of equal merit. Thus, much of the important action is delivered with recitatives instead of impassioned melodic utterance. The listener is left thinking that the composer had said all he could in his previous opera, Andrea Chenier, written two years earlier. Nevertheless, the singers got everything that was in the piece and then some. All delivered their notes with full voice. This was con belto, not bel canto.
The Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva sounded like she was ready for Aida. This carpet bombing approach to singing, she was forte or more for most of the show, was fine for Fedora. Fedora hates the tenor, then loves, and then kills herself. The transitions were handled by the soprano better than by the composer.
Loris Ipanov, has got to be the unluckiest tenor in all opera. First he discovers that his wife, a servant girl he married on impulse, is cheating on him with Fedora’s fiance who only wants her (Fedora’s) money. After falling in love with Fedora she denounces Loris to the Russian Imperial police. She then realizes that Loris acted in self defense and runs away to Switzerland with him, now in love with the man she used to hate and regardless of the accusatory letter she sent. The letter results in the death of Loris’s brother and mother. When he accuses her of treachery she takes poison and dies. The poor guy is left with nothing but his high notes. His post operatic future is as bleak as that of Don Alvaro at the conclusion of La Forza del Destino. Piotr Beczała as the simultaneously loved and unloved Loris was outstanding. His voice has matured into a rich spinto. Though 56 years old, he looks and sounds like a man 15 years younger. His sound was rich and full throughout its range. The big Verdi tenor roles are his if he wants them.
The Countess Olga and her friend Giovanni De Seriex are a reduced version of Musetta and Marcello in La Bohème. Played by soprano Rosa Feola and baritone Lucas Mechem, they were vocally as fine as their slender material would allow. I’d like to hear them in bigger roles.
The entire cast were all at or above the level asked of them. This production requires a lot of resources. The outlay is even more noteworthy as the opera is unlikely to be done again at the Met for at least another generation. I don’t wish to seem too critical, the performance was excellent and the opera is pleasant. Maestro Armiliato appears to think highly of the opera. He conducted, without a score as is his want, to great effect and got the expected high level of performance now routine from the Met’s great orchestra.
A special note. Pianist Bryan Waghorn dressed in a long blond wig and wearing culottes made his onstage debut in this production as the pianist Boleslao Lazinski. Lazinski is said to be the nephew of Chopin. He plays while Fedora and Loris banter during the first part of Act 2. He appeared to be having a very good time and played his salon music with elan.
An unrelated note – the Met’s database seems to have stopped growing. Whether from neglect or inadvertence is unknown to me. The last entry was December 4, 2022. The Met’s ongoing chronicle of its performances is a very useful list. I hope the company gets back to it.
La Rondine (The Swallow) is the 8th of Puccini’s 12 operas. It is the least performed of his mature works. It was commissioned in 1913 by Vienna’s Carltheater. They wanted a lighter and more entertaining opera in the style of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. The result was more in the style of Lehar with touches of La Traviata and another Strauss’s Die Fledermaus mixed in.
The opera was not finished until 1916 when Austria and Italy were at war. Therefore, the premiere was given in neutral territory – Monaco at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in March of 1917. Puccini fiddled with the opera never deciding on a definitive version – there are three, two with two different endings.
Puccini, even on a day off, was going to compose an opera with a lot of beautiful and interesting music. The ending to the opera’s second act is exceptionally well done. Magda goes to Bullier’s – a Parisian cabaret. Her maid Lisette also shows up. She is convinced by her escort Prunier that Magda is someone else. Ruggero arrives and doesn’t recognize Magda when she sits at his table. She tells him her name is Paulette. Everyone was together in the first act, so either there’s an outbreak of river blindness or Bullier’s is very dimly lit. The two couples sing a toast to love. Rambaldo ( the man who is keeping Magda) also turns up. He has no trouble recognizing her. He asks her to leave, but she want to remain with Ruggero. They have fallen in love (despite the poor visibility) and decide to be together, but Magda is worried about deceiving Ruggero about her past and true identity. The act ends with the dawn as the new couple walks towards what Ruggero believes is eternal bliss.
The excerpt below starts just before the great ensemble ‘Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso’ and continues to the end of the act. The scene is pure Puccini genius – both theatrically and musically.
La Rondine Act 2 finale
On November 11th of this year, the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra presented a semi-staged performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. The cast is below. The link will lead you to a collection of photos I took during the dress rehearsal the day before the performance. Click on the thumbnails to see the whole photo. The picture above the title of an empty Buddy Holly Hall was taken the evening of the rehearsal
Madama Butterfly Pictures
The Metropolitan Opera telecast Kevin Puts new opera The Hours around the world this afternoon. The company gave the work its world premiere last month. The libretto by Greg Pierce is based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the subsequent film. It depicts a day in the life of three desperately unhappy women -the novelist Virginia Woolf, and two fictional characters – Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan. The suicidal Woolf is writing Mrs Galloway in 1923. Laura is unhappily married with a son and a baby on the way. Her time frame is the fifties. Clarissa is trying to get her friend Richard to attend a party in his honor during the nineties. He is understandably depressed as he’s dying of AIDS. Richard calls Clarissa Mrs Galloway, the first name of Woolf’s eponymous protagonist. Virtually everyone in the opera except Leonard Woolf is homosexual. Whether there’s a connection is not specified. Leonard prevents Virginia from self annihilation – she succeeded 18 years later. Laura checks into a hotel to take pills, but changes her mind. Richard with Clarissa in the room jumps out of his apartment window turning the party that was to honor him for a writing award into a wake. Laura shows up and is revealed to be Richard’s mother. She also confesses to deserting her family. It’s not a happy tale. Nobody seems to have a good reason for living – or for dying, for that matter. Existential angst is the dominant theme of the work.
The action spans two acts with episodes involving the three women interposed and even occurring simultaneously. Philip Glass wrote the score for the film version of this sad story. Puts does his best to try to avoid Glass’s repetitive style. For the most part he succeeds, but every now and then a little bit of Glass tinkles through. Puts’ music is very interesting. Its level of sophistication is above that of the recent new operas mounted by the Met. Most of the musical interest is in the orchestra which is richly scored. The second act is much better than the first. The finale of the first act is powerful, though today’s rendering of it lacked the impact that it had on the performance of Dec 7 which was broadcast on the Sirius Met channel. Almost all the lyricism present in the work, I’m not comparing Puts to Strauss or Puccini, is in Act 2. It take a lot of chutzpah to end an opera with a trio for two sopranos and a mezzo raising the inevitable spectre of Strauss’s transcendent trio near the end of Der Rosenkavalier. But Puts’ trio is fine if you can suspend your memory of the earlier one. Compared to the contemporary competition The Hours is quite good. The opera does have its soporific moments, but they are all in the first act.
The Met has done a spectacular job of staging the opera. Different parts of the stage serve as the scenes of the ever shifting temporal settings of the work. The fifties era kitchen looks spot on as do the sets for the Virginia and Clarissa stories. The scenery changes in tune with the score and is effortlessly moved by the Met’s outstanding technical resources. Ballet is typically an embarrassment in opera. There were a gaggle of dancers circling the action for no purpose I could discern, but they were not an embarrassment.
Obviously, the focus of the story is the three women. All three were outstanding. Renée Fleming, who stimulated Puts to write the opera, still has a luminous soprano. She could easily continue to appear on the opera stage despite her retirement from staged opera in 2017. Her singing was on point throughout the afternoon.
Kelli O’Hara as Laura is mostly a broadway performer, but has an operatically trained voice and easily kept up with her two co-stars. Her duet with Virginia was powerfully rendered.
Joyce DiDonato was Virginia. Clad in drab clothes and made up to be dowdy and pushing 60, the mezzo gave a fine reading of the author in search on an exit. Her appearance is in sharp contradistinction to the real Woolf who was only 41 in 1923 and was also very attractive. There was a brief moment of vocal insecurity in the second act, but she was otherwise outstanding.
The cast, listed below, is very large. All were up to their tasks. Particularly notable was the work of 11 year old Kai Edgar as Richie the boy who grew up to be Richard. He was sung by Kyle Ketelsen. The Man Under the Arch was sung as a vocalise by countertenor John Holiday; he was a too obvious symbol of death. He even took Richard’s body away after his fatal plunge. Kathleen Kim did a sly riff on the Queen of the Night’s aria. There were no weakness among the entire cast.
The chorus has a very big part in this opera – both onstage and off. Puts has written fine and emphatic music for the chorus which they delivered with elan and dispatch. A bravura performance for the Met’s brilliant ensemble. The same was true for the company’s equally brilliant orchestra. Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin got a nuanced and compelling sound from his players. Nézet-Séguin was intimately involved in both the composition and preparation for the staging of this opera. His presence from the work’s beginning to today showed in the final product.
Who is this opera for? Somebody who likes contemporary opera and can afford the Met’s wallet busting ticket tariffs. It’s worth a trip to the cinema at greatly reduced prices compared to live. Will the work endure? I doubt it, but I’ve been wrong about so many other things that I will leave the decision to time and future audiences. Is there any other choice?
Metropolitan Opera House
December 10, 2022
*THE HOURS*
Opera in Two Acts
Kevin Puts / Libretto by Greg Pierce
Based on the book by Michael Cunningham and the Paramount Pictures film
Clarissa Vaughan………..Renée Fleming
Virginia Woolf………….Joyce DiDonato
Laura Brown…………….Kelli O’Hara
Richard………………..Kyle Ketelsen
Sally………………….Denyce Graves
Richie…………………Kai Edgar
Leonard Woolf…………..Sean Panikkar
Dan Brown………………Brandon Cedel
Louis………………….William Burden
Walter…………………Tony Stevenson
Barbara………………..Kathleen Kim
Kitty………………….Sylvia D’Eramo
Man Under the Arch………John Holiday
Nelly………………….Eve Gigliotti
Vanessa………………..Sylvia D’Eramo
Hotel Clerk…………….John Holiday
Mrs. Latch……………..Kathleen Kim
Julian…………………Atticus Ware
Quentin………………..Patrick Scott McDermott
Angelica……………….Lena Josephine Marano
Conductor………………Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production……………..Phelim McDermott
Set and Costume Designer……Tom Pye
Lighting Designer……….Bruno Poet
Projection Designer……..Finn Ross
Choreographer…………..Annie-B Parson
Dramaturg………………Paul Cremo
Video Director Gary………… Halvorson
The most fully realized riot in all opera is the one that ends the second act of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. It’s a gigantic free for all involving everyone in the neighborhood including nine of the meistersingers. Beckmesser starts a serenade full of errors that are marked by Hans Sachs striking his cobbler’s hammer. “David wakes...
Below is a link that will download a PowerPoint presentation I gave before last night’s performances of Madama Butterfly by the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra. To use it download all the files and put them in the same folder. To hear the sound excerpts click on the sound icon on the slides that are associated with music. They are...
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Cherubini’s semi extinct opera was televised across the globe for the first (and likely the last) time today. The opera owes its persistence to Maria Callas who performed the title role often during the 50s and early 60s. The part has a deserved reputation for difficulty, though there are many soprano roles just as demanding...
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Yesterday evening the Met revived Graham Vick’s production of Shostakovich’s 20th century masterpiece Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. A few remarks about the production. The Met has mounted this staging in 1994, 2000, 2014, and now in this year. To its discredit the Met has yet to include the opera in its HD series. I suspect...
Celestina Boninsegna (1877-1947) was an Italian soprano best known for her facility with Verdi’s great soprano parts. Born in Reggio Emilia she was something of a vocal prodigy. Her first appearance on stage was as Norina in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale; she was 15. Following the completion of her vocal studies at the Conservatorio Gioachino Rossini in...
This evening the Met opened its 2022-23 season with its first ever presentation of Luigi Cherubini’s opera Medea. Well, it’s mostly by Cherubini. He wrote Médée an opéra comique for the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris. After its premiere in 1797, it was largely neglected. It was subsequently translated into German and the dialogue replaced with...
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Hector Berlioz (1803-66) was a composer of such unique gifts that he deserves a place among the great composers all to himself. So original were his ideas and talents that even after more than a century and a half after his death, we still struggle to keep up with him. He invented the modern symphony...
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Jonathan Tetelman is an American tenor (b 1988) who is making his presence felt at an increasing number of important opera venues. A schedule of his upcoming engagements is here. The tenor recently signed a recording contract with DGG and his first disc Arias has just been released. It’s very difficult to form an accurate...
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During the half century that separates the premieres of Verdi’s Nabucco from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut only two Italian operas not by Verdi entered the standard operatic repertoire – so complete was his dominance. The two survivors are Boito’s Mefistofele and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-86) was born in a small town near Cremona. He...
Hamlet returned to the Met after a 12 year absence. This time, however, it was not the 19th century French forgettable by Ambroise Thomas, but the 2017 opera by Brett Dean. The reason for the 2010 revival, which was the return of an opera not mounted by the company since 1895, was the the impersonation...
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Puccini’s farewell to opera returned for the third time as part of the Met’s HD series. Franco Zeffirelli’s brick for brick reconstruction of Imperial Peking will likely survive the heat death of the universe. The assembly of the Act 2 set takes longer than many of the operas in the Mets repertory. This go around...
The third month? No. The region on the Adriatic coast of Italy? No. The kind with music and soldiers. Though the form is typically brisk and commonly associated with parades and halftime shows, it is pliable and is often connected with less than happy events. Here are a bunch of them, in no particular order...
The Met’s new production of Lucia Di Lammermoor staged by Simon Stone has been roughly handled by several critics. It received its second performance last night which was broadcast on the Met’s radio network. The show will be telecast on May 21. I decided to listen to it without the gouts of blood and high...
Last night the Met broadcast one of its current run of Puccini’s masterpiece – it was the 898th time the company has presented the opera. The current Butterfly is Italian soprano Eleonora Buratto. She was good in a part that demands great. Tepid applause after ‘Un bel di’ and none after Butterfly’s moment of triumph...
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German opera after Mozart became increasingly self conscious. Strauss’s Ariadne Auf Naxos is an example of this solipsistic trait. It was originally intended to be a half hour divertissement to follow Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s adaption of Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Strauss also wrote incidental music for the play. The 30 minute opera grew to 90 and the whole evening’s performance lasted more than six hours. Unsurprisingly, the show was not a success. This first effort was in 1912. Four years later, Hofmannsthal persuaded Strauss that the play should be replaced by a prologue which explained why the commedia dell’arte characters were wandering around Naxos during The Opera. This version premiered in Vienna in October of 1916 and is the one almost always performed today.
The Prologue contains a lot of dialogue. There’s even a character who speaks rather than sings – The Major-domo. TV host Matthew Polanzani called the prologue ‘chatty’. It’s so conversational that the Prologue was done in English when Ariadne first appeared at the Met in 1962. The composer of The Opera is conned into letting Zerbinetta’s troupe of comic players perform simultaneously with those of his serious opera. All this hustle and bustle is skillfully scored by Strauss. There are serious discussions of art and music, but except for a short stretch of the composer’s monologue and interaction with Zerbinetta there’s nothing that touches the emotions which is opera’s raison d’etre. The second half of the work contains the best known arias. But emotional depth doesn’t arrive until the duet between Ariadne and Bacchus that ends the opera.
The current production dates to 1993 when it was staged by Elijah Moshinsky. The Prologue is set in the bowels of the estate of the richest man in Vienna and is a whirlpool of activity. Herr Rich Guy keeps changing the program of the evening’s events which is what drives the story. Isabel Leonard as the composer looked, acted, and sang the part with skill and sincerity. She got everything possible from her role. Veteran baritone Wolfgang Brendel returned as the non-singing Major-domo after an absence of 15 years. He was expertly officious. There’s enough happening in the first part to keep you awake, but if you’re waiting for some of the lyricism, either from the voices or from the orchestra, for which Strauss was renowned you’ll be disappointed.
The Opera is set on a stylized Naxos. The three nymphs were each on a very high platform that was wheeled around as the action proceded. Their positions looked precarious, but they (Deanna Breiwick, Tamara Mumford, and Tamara Mumford) seemed secure and sang with ease.
Ariadne was sung by the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen. Though she has been singing some heavy roles, she has a lyric soprano voice. Ariadne pushed her near the limit of her sound. She gave a convincing reading of ‘Es gibt ein Reich’. She was clearly the live audience’s favorite. This role was her third at the Met. She previously has sung Lisa in The Queen of Spades and Eva in Die Meistersinger. Both roles are less demanding than today’s. She’s gotten rave reviews for this performance, so maybe I was expecting too much.
High soprano Brenda Rae delivered ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin’ with superlative singing. The piece is as difficult a coloratura aria as can be found anywhere in opera. Her alpine notes were spot on regardless of whether her feet were on the ground or not. Her bravura performance was the highlight of the afternoon.
Strauss didn’t like the tenor range and his writing for tenor shows this displeasure. The tenor only has a few words in the Prologue. In the Opera he appears at the conclusion as Bacchus. The young god’s music is set in the most difficult part of the tenor range. It’s a killer. Brandon Jovanovich got through without misadventure, though it was a close run thing. He sounded hoarse during his offstage singing before his entrance. But the phlegm must have cleared as the hoarseness did not recur.
All of the numerous secondary parts were performed to the highest standard. Laurie Feldman directed this iteration of the production with insight. Just keeping the performers from running over each other in the Prologue is a directorial feat.
Conductor Marek Janowski returned to the Met after a 33 year interval. He led a refined reading of a score delicately written for an orchestra small by Straussian standards. The players were, as is now typical, up to anything they were asked to do.
Video director Gary Halvorson relapsed to extreme closeups. They were so near that you could estimate with a good degree of accuracy how much money each of the singers had spent on the cosmetic dentistry. Some of the dental work appeared to reach six figures.
Strauss was as skillful as possible in the construction of an opera. What he lacked in this opera was a story that allowed poetry, at least until its conclusion. Having a literary giant as your librettist can have drawbacks. Still Strauss even off his peak is worth an occasional hearing.
Metropolitan Opera House
March 12, 2022
*ARIADNE AUF NAXOS*
Richard Strauss-Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Ariadne/Prima Donna…..Lise Davidsen
Bacchus/Tenor………..Brandon Jovanovich
Zerbinetta…………..Brenda Rae
The Composer…………Isabel Leonard
Music Master…………Johannes Martin Kränzle
Harlekin…………….Sean Michael Plumb
Scaramuccio………….Alok Kumar
Truffaldin…………..Ryan Speedo Green
Brighella……………Miles Mykkanen
Najade………………Deanna Breiwick
Dryade………………Tamara Mumford
Echo………………..Maureen McKay
Major-domo…………..Wolfgang Brendel
Officer……………..Thomas Capobianco
Dancing Master……….Brenton Ryan
Wigmaker…………….Philip Cokorinos
Lackey………………Patrick Carfizzi
Piano Solo…………..Bryan Wagorn
Conductor……………Marek Janowski
Production…………..Elijah Moshinsky
Designer…………….Michael Yeargan
Lighting Designer…….Gil Wechsler
Stage Director……….Laurie Feldman
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson
That Wagner was anti-Semitic is indisputable. The extent to which his prejudice entered his operas is much less certain. Eric Nelson, the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government at Harvard, recently published Wagner and the Anti-Semitism of ‘the Ring’ in Commentary. Professor Nelson approaches this subject from an unusual position. He knows the Ring operas note for note and word for word. He is a passionate Wagnerian who would travel the world to hear a new Ring production – at least before the world went mad over a respiratory virus. He thinks they are anti-semitic which does not dampen his ardor for them despite being Jewish.
He presents the three views on this subject: “[F]irst, Wagner was not an anti-Semite at all, despite whatever unpleasant things he may have said or written about particular Jews. This claim is so absurd that no serious Wagner scholar has defended it for quite some time.” Second, “Yes, Wagner was an anti-Semite, but, then again, so was Chopin, so was Degas, so was Virginia Woolf. The important fact, on this view, is that Wagner’s anti-Semitism had nothing to do with his music dramas, which must be seen to have completely unrelated artistic and philosophical ambitions.” Finally, “Wagner’s undoubted anti-Semitism does in fact inflect his operas, insofar as certain characters within them are intended as sinister caricatures of Jews. Thus, Alberich and Mime, the two dwarf protagonists of the Ring, are meant to appear Jewish; ditto the pedant Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the seductress Kundry in Parsifal, and several others.”
Nelson rejects all three and then makes a more subtle argument for anti-Semitism in The Ring. He posits Wagner believed that certain characteristics of human behavior are crystalized in Judaism. These are, he thinks, borrowed from Marx. “They consist of a ‘bargain’ mentality with Judaism, …. an egoistic fetishism of needs that reduces both the self and other people to “means, rather than ends. Jews particularly adore money, on this account, because it is the efficient medium through which human beings (particularly their labor) can be commodified and exchanged. At the limit, Marx explains, the species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade! The woman is bought and sold.”
Nelson then cites several passages from the Ring that personify this type of disguised anti-Semitism. He writes “that much of the Ring is, in essence, On the Jewish Question (Marx’s infamous tract) set to music.” The casual or even devoted listener to the Ring operas is very likely to miss the prejudicial signs that in Nelson’s view contaminate the four operas. He loves the works with such vehemence that he is quite willing to overlook them. He consoles his predicament by observing “that my fellow sufferers have included the likes of Hermann Levi, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, George Gershwin, and, Theodor Herzl.” All were Jewish. And then names those modern Jewish performers who share his passion.
He does allow that some Jewish musicians, Thomas Adès, for example, thinks the music dramas to be not very good. Applying his appeal to authority as grounds for accepting an overtly anti-Semitic (Nelson’s view) work as so sublime as to warrant overlooking a perverted view of life one could have added Stravinsky to the list of great musicians not impressed by the Ring. “I say that in the aria ‘La donna è mobile’, for example, which the elite thinks only brilliant and superficial, there is more substance and feeling than in the whole of Wagner’s Ring cycle.” Or one could cite the Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin who wrote of the “appalling elephantiasis of late German romanticism.” Who was the biggest elephant in that group?
My opinion, knowing Wagner’s operas including The Ring, pretty well – if not to the depth of Professor Nelson – is that almost everything he [Nelson] writes about will be lost on all but less than one in a thousand listeners. Wagner was a much better composer than he was a librettist. Most opera librettos do not merit serious discussion away from the music that is written to them. The 25 librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte not set to Mozart’s music are forgotten. The anti-Semitism which Nelson detects in Wagner’s Ring will likely be missed by all but the most analytical audience – analytical on the level of Sherlock Holmes. Wagner was a rabid anti-Semite, but you likely won’t notice it during a routine trip to a Ring opera.
Wagner was a great composer who wrote operas that are mostly too long and which both captivate and bore the non-addicted opera goers who listens to them. I have attended many performances of all of Wagner’s operas that are in the standard repertory. I have rarely made it through one without a brief, or even longer, snooze. Rossini’s observation, “That Wagner has his moments, but also his half hours, ” is still valid more than a century and a half after he made it.
Professor Nelson’s article is well written and informative. In placing it in perspective the reader must keep in mind that he is a self confessed possessor of the Wagner gene I’ve written about here. He can’t help himself in his passion for Wagner’s operas any more than the moth can resist the flame.
This article was originally published here on May 29, 2019. It was damaged beyond repair such that I had to reconstruct it anew.
Ben Heppner (b 1956) is a now retired Canadian tenor. At his peak, the 1990s, he was as fine a tenor as can be imagined. His career at the Met lasted from 1991 to 2009. He is now a regular host of two Canadian radio programs both devoted to vocal music, especially opera .
Heppner was best known for his Wagnerian roles, but he also sang Aeneus in Berlioz’s Les Troyens and several Italian roles – most notably Andrea Chenier and Otello. It was his assumption of the latter that marked the beginning of his vocal decline. I was so impressed with Heppner’s singing that I traveled to Chicago solely to hear his first go at Verdi’s tragic Moor. Given that he had made a big success as Tristan, I was sure that he had the goods for Otello. Peter Hall’s new production of Otello was first performed on Tuesday September 25, 2001. Appearing with Heppner were Renée Fleming and Lucio Gallo. Jonas Kauffman made his American debut as Cassio. Andrew Davis conducted.
Heppner was in trouble from the start. His voice repeatedly cracked at places where one would not expect such a mishap. Ms Fleming was fine as was Kauffman. Gallo was savaged in the New York Times by Bernard Holland. I thought Mr Gallo underplayed his role as Verdi intended. Mr Holland thought that he overacted and blustered his way through the part. We must have been sitting in different parts of the house.
Heppner blamed his continuing difficulties in other performances on the ACE inhibitor he was taking to treat his diabetes and hypertension. Regardless of cause, he was not the same singer in the first decade of the new millenium that he had been in the last decade of the old. Accordingly, I’ll only deal with a few recordings that show him at his best, which as I’ve alluded to above was very good indeed.
His voice was a firm spinto, but without any hint of baritonal overtones. It was not a Italianate voice, as were those of Tucker and Corelli. His sound was apt for Wagner and Berlioz. But he was a fine artist who sang with sensitivity and feeling and hence was effective in Italian roles despite the limitations just mentioned
I’ll start with Wagner. First In fernem Land from Lohengrin. This role in general and the aria specifically is Wagner at his most lyrical. Lohengrin is often the one Wagner opera that Italian tenors sing. Hepner’s reading is right on the mark. Similarly his version of the Preislied from the last act of Die Meistersinger is full voiced while still retaining a graceful line. He’s in more mountainous terrain when he sings Wagner’s idiot child Siegfried. He was supposed to sing the part in the two final Ring operas at the Met, but withdrew. In this recording, made several years before his canceled Met appearances (2011) as Siegfried, he displays all the power and verve demanded by the role. Whether he had the stamina needed is debatable even if one goes back to his 90s prime. This excerpt is from the last scene in Act 1 of Siegfried when the eponymous hero, brave but witless, reforges his father broken sword Nothung. Burkhard Ulrich is Mime.
Heppner sang eight performances as Aeneas in Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the Met, all in the Berlioz bicentennial year of 2003. I heard one of them. He was good in a notoriously difficult role. He did not crack as he had in Otello. His recording of Inutiles Regrets! .. Ah! quand viendra l’instant from the last act of Les Troyens shows the singer at his best. The opera takes about a week to perform, so by the time the tenor gets to this aria he’s likely in need parenteral hyperalimentation. Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust is of a reasonable length. But again Nature immense, impénétrable et fière comes near its end. Heppner is equally fine in this aria; his voice is right in Berlioz’s sweet spot. The great Hector’s vocal music sound is like no one else.
Testa adorata from Act 3 of Leoncavallo’s almost never performed La Boheme is frequently encountered on redcordings and in recitals. Heppner’s approach is full throated and reminiscent of Mario Lanza’s recording. Calaf in Turandot was in Heppner’s repertoire, though he never sang the role at the Met. Nessun dorma, the last great Italian tenor aria, gets a boffo reading. Heppner also recorded many songs. Tosti’s famous Ideale has been sung by just about every tenor who got close to a recording studio, none better than Heppner.
Finally, the concluding scene from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt. This opera was a big hit when it first appeared in 1920. After World War II is was infrequently performed. It seems to be making a comeback. It’s a marvelous work that requires a heldentenor who can also sing like Bellini wrote part of the score. Heppner never sang the role onstage, though he had the perfect voice for Paul – the opera’s protagonist. The final scene of the opera displays both Korngold’s melodic gift and his virtuosic orchestration. These characteristics made him the preeminent composer of movie scores after he was forced to leave Europe. The Met should bring the opera back. It’s much better than a lot of the stuff they’ve been force feeding their audiences recently. But if the company does reprise the opera they’ll need to find an exceptional tenor.
Heppner at his peak was a great tenor. Fortunately for posterity he made many recordings. They are all examples of his best efforts.
Matteo Manuguerra (1924-1998) was born in Tunis to Italian parents. His family moved to Buenos Aires where he received his initial vocal training. Rare among great singers was his extremely late start. He didn’t begin studying voice until he was 35. He first was a tenor, but after moving to France in 1961 he retuned as a baritone making his debut as Valentin in Gounod’s Faust in 1962 with the Opéra de Lyon. He stayed with that company for three years. In 1966 he appeared at the Palais Garnier as Rigoletto. He soon was engaged by all of the world’s major opera companies. His Met debut was in in 1971. He appeared 127 times at the Met including 24 performances as Rigoletto. I heard him him all the roles he sang with the Lyric Opera in Chicago. He was the baritone who as Tonio in Pagliacci lost the head of his drumstick in Act 1 and as Rigoletto had the door to his garden come of in his hand in Act 2. I’ve written about these two accidents earlier. Stage accidents aside, I was very impressed by the beauty of his voice and the skill with which he used it.
Manuguerra had a rich velvety baritone that was ideal for the great Verdi roles. He was also comfortable in bel canto and verismo roles. His reviews were uniformly very positive except for his impersonation of Escamillo in Carmen. His high baritone and stocky physique were unsuitable for the role.
He sang until he was 70 with great effect. He retired because of bad leg pain. I don’t know the cause of this pain. He had gained a lot of weight as he aged. He died suddenly of a heart attack at 74. Two possible candidates for his debilitating symptoms are osteoarthritis or intermittent claudication secondary to the vascular disease that eventually killed him. Both disorders would be exacerbated by obesity, but pure speculation on my part.
Dio di Giuda! is sung by the title character of Verdi’s Nabucco. He went mad in Act 2 after proclaiming himself god. In Act 4 he prays to the God of the Hebrews. He asks for forgiveness, and promises to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and convert to Judaism if his prayers are answered. This recording is from a recital and has piano accompaniment.
Oh, de’ verd’anni miei is from Act 3 of Ernani. This is the moment when Don Carlo decides to grow up and stop chasing women after he’s elected Holy Roman Emperor. His election is announced shortly after the aria.
Next, La sua lampada vitale from Act 1 scene 2 of Verdi’s I Masnadieri. The baritone has a plan to hasten his father’s death so he can inherit his title and estate.
Stiffelio is the oddest choice of subject in all of Verdi’s operas. The title character is a minister whose wife, Lina, has committed adultery. He eventually forgives her. In Act 3 Stankar, her father, decides to kill the man who seduced her, which he does offstage. The excerpt includes the recitative that precedes the aria and the cabaletta that follows it. Manuguerra’s singing is sensitive and dramatically apt – an outstanding effort. Lina pensai che un angelo
Rigoletto was at the center of Manuguerra’s repertoire. His interpretation of Verdi’s tragic jester was among the best I’ve heard. Cortigiani vil razza dannata in Act 2 is the Verdi baritone’s summa. This reading is from a live performance in 1977 when the baritone was at the height of his powers even though he was well past 50.
Di Provenza from La Traviata brings the action to total immobility in Act 2 of La Traviata. It’s a good tune that Verdi inserted as he likely felt a first rate baritone wouldn’t do the role of the elder Germont without an aria. Manuguerra sings the piece to perfection.
Next two of Verdi’s greatest pieces for baritone. Eri tu from Un Ballo in Maschera depicts Renato’s rage, sorrow, and grief over what he believes was his betrayal by his wife with his best friend. He’s sort of right. Urna fatale… Egli è salvo is from Act 2 of La Forza Del Destino. Another Don Carlo discovers that his new friend, perhaps mortally wounded, is the man he’s been trying to kill for a long time. The tenor Don Alvaro escapes his wrath and is still alive at the opera’s end after wiping out the entire Calatrava family. The loud orchestral sound is the result of the recording being made with a microphone in the pit during a performance in Florence in 1974. The very young Riccardo Muti was the conductor. His presence was the reason the high note at the end of the aria was omitted.
O monumento is sung by a particularly vile villain – Barnaba – in the first act of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Arrigo Boito the librettist was so embarrassed by the florid story that he rearranged the letters of his name to Tobia Gorrio, but his guilt was not hidden. Gioconda is one of opera’s guilty pleasures as is Andrea Chenier. I really like both. Nemico della patria is the baritone aria in Act 3. The disillusioned revolutionary Carlo Gerard muses of the wrong turn taken by new government.
Finally, another version of Di Provenza taken from the last production of the baritone’s career. The staging of Traviata was in Buenos Aires. Manuguerra broke character to acknowledge the applause. He even gestured to the orchestra. Di Provenza at 70
Manuguerra was clearly one of the best baritones of the second half of the last century. Posterity doesn’t seem to have been as kind to him as his ability merits, but his recordings will ensure he’s not forgotten.
Serious operas typically end with some, or even all, of the principals dead. Death is as frequent in opera as corruption is in politics. I thought it would be interesting to present a few that don’t require an undertaker after the final curtain. My definition of a serious opera is one that is not a comedy and which concludes with all its character alive; they don’t have to be happy, just animate. The operas are presented in chronological order.
First, two by Mozart. Idomeneo was written in 1781 when the composer was 24 years old. It was successful at its premiere in Munich, but has languished in the outskirts of the standard operatic repertory. It didn’t reach the Met until 1982 when it was staged with Luciano Pavarotti in the title role. I saw him do the opera in Chicago about the same time he was doing it in New York. There are those who think it a masterpiece. If opera seria is your thing, you may share this view. I had difficulty staying awake.
The action is set in Crete after the Trojan War. The Trojan princess Illia is in love with King Idomeneo’s son Idamante. Elettra who’s also on the island is jealous. The plot’s too convoluted to go into great detail. Idomeneo to calm Neptune into stopping a storm when he’s at sea vows to sacrifice the first person he meets when he comes ashore. Of course, that person turns out to be his son. He doesn’t reveal the identity of the sacrificial victim until Act 3 to the unhappiness of the populace – Oh voto tremendo. But just in the nick of time Neptune’s anger dissipates and the lovers are united and proclaimed rulers of Crete. Everyone is happy save Elettra who leaves to face the furies. She’s in trouble, but still alive. Act 3 finale
Mozart’s last opera’s title La Clemenza di Tito gives the ending away. There’s a plot against Emperor Titus that fails. Vitellia the daughter of the previous emperor Vitellio confesses her instigation of the conspiracy and Titus includes her in his general pardon of everyone in the known world. Nobody dies. Non più di fiori with basset horn obbligato. The opera is performed even less frequently than Idomeneo – 51 times versus 73 at the Met.
Beethoven’s rescue opera Fidelio gave him so much trouble that he never wrote another. The work has some great music in it, but it also has its longueurs, especially in the first scene. But the the canon Quartet appears and the listener is dazzled. Act 2 opens with Florestan, who Leonora disguised as Fidelio will rescue, imprisoned in a lightless dungeon. He complains of the dark and his situation – Gott! Welch Dunkel hier! The aria is extremely difficult written mainly in the most difficult part of the tenor’s range. Jonas Kaufmann gives it the best reading I’ve yet heard. Note the crescendo he takes with the first word – ‘Gott’. In the opera’s last scene the bad guy has been arrested, Florestan free, and Fidelio’s real identity revealed. Everybody is happy; the scene is closer to a cantata or oratorio than opera. Here’s the whole scene – Fidelio Act 2 scene 2. If there was ever a flawed masterpiece, Fidelio is it.
The first of Donizetti four operas about the Tudors has a happy ending. Il Castello di Kenilworth is based on Walter Scott’s 1821 novel Kenilworth. It depicts Robert Dudley’s (1st Earl of Leicester), Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, attempt to conceal from her his recent marriage to Amelia – based on Amy Robsart. In reality, Amy was married to Dudley well before he became involved with Elizabeth. She died in 1560 under suspicious circumstances. First performed in Naples in 1829, it was revised the following year.
Fearing the Queen’s displeasure, Dudley. asks his servant Lambourne to arrange for Amelia to be hidden until Elizabeth departs. Amelia is taken to a small cell in the castle by Leicester’s equerry, Warney. He then tries to seduce her and tells that she has been placed there because her husband no longer loves her. When Amelia rejects his advances, Warney vows revenge.
Amelia manages to escape from the cell and in a secret garden of the castle encounters the Queen. She tearfully tells the Queen about her troubles with Leicester, whom she believes has betrayed her. The Queen goes to Leicester and Warney angrily demanding an explanation. Warney deceitfully tries to persuade the Queen that Amelia is his wife. The Queen vows to resolve the mystery and briefly believes the lie. Leicester, however, reveals his marriage with Amelia to the Queen who becomes even more angry and dismisses him.
Warney, still desiring revenge, attempts to take Amelia away with him from Kenilworth with a lie that it is Leicester’s wish, but fails when she refuses to go. He then tries to poison Amelia, but is foiled by her faithful servant, Fanny. In the end, Elizabeth orders the arrest of Warney, pardons Leicester and Amelia, and approves their marriage to the jubilation of all [from Wikipedia synopsis]. In the novel Warney kills Amy.
The opera contains a lot of very good music. Of particular interest is the quartet from act 2. This excerpt is from a 2019 performance at the Donizetti Festival in the composer’s home town, Bergamo. The opera is good enough to stand comparison with the more popular Three Queens Operas.
Two of Bellini’s operas have happy ending even though they’re serious. Bellini seems to have been a very serious fellow. Heinrich Heine described him “as a sigh in pumps.” La Sonnambula is a silly serious opera with glorious music. The sleepwalker of the title somnambulates herself into Count Rodolfo’s room where she is discovered. Her sweetheart, the tenor naturally, finds her there and thinks the worst. Things eventually sort themselves out and the lovers reunite and everybody’s happy. Prendi: l’anel ti dono occurs in the opera’s first scene. The lovers express their love. Elvino (tenor) give Amina (soprano) a ring to seal their troth. Bellini’s extraordinary melodic facility has impressed all who followed including Chopin, Verdi, and Wagner. The latter usually hated everybody’s music, especially if the composer was still alive. Bellini died at age 33 when Wagner was just 22.
The Sicilian composer’s last opera was I Puritani. It’s another silly tale where the soprano (Elvira) goes mad when she thinks her lover (Arturo) has deserted her. He returns and she regains her reason. I wonder how this relationship will play out in the long run if every time her husband takes a break she goes bonkers. But that was beyond Bellini’s purview. The action takes place with the struggle between the Puritans under Cromwell against the royalists hence the rousing duet Suoni la tromba that ends Act 2. The baritone and bass sing the piece as a prelude to battle. The baritone on this recording is the great Matteo Manuguerra. I’ll do a post devoted to him soon.
The famous ensemble A te, o cara in which the tenor takes the lead is from the Act 1 scene 3. Arturo arrives and expresses his happiness about his love life; everyone then joins in. Alfredo Kraus is the tenor. Montserrat Caballé is the soprano.
Puccini has only one serious opera without a fatality. That’s better than Verdi who has at least one death in all his serious operas. Sometimes, the death rate reaches double figures as in The Sicilian Vespers. Puccini’s non-lethal opera La Fanciulla del West was written for the Met which gave its first performance in 1910. It starred Enrico Caruso and was led by Arturo Toscanini who said the opera was ‘a great symphonic poem’ which is what it is. Puccini was aware of all the music that was being created during his career and used all the new inventions of Debussy and Strauss in a way uniquely his own. While the opera has never had the popularity of Bohème, et al and never will, if it comes your way with a good cast and orchestra – don’t miss it. It is regularly performed. The Met has done it 111 times. The finale to Act 1 shows the beautifully dreamy web that Puccini spins with consummate skill. Pay close attention to the orchestra and the offstage chorus as the act ends. The writing is magical.
The opera concludes with Minnie rescuing Dick Johnson from being lynched. The couple says goodbye to all the gold miners and rides off into the sunrise – they’re in California and would run out of land if they went west. Fanciulla finale
Like all things, I’ve reached the end. Happily I hope.
Verdi’s The Sicilian Vespers was written to a French text by Eugene Scribe – Les vêpres siciliennes. It first appeared at the Paris Opera in 1855. Its French iteration was unsuccessful and it disappeared from France, and most of the rest of the operatic world, until fairly recently. In its Italian form is was more successful, though not anywhere close to the successes of its siblings written during Verdi’s middle period. It didn’t make it to the Met until 1967. In total, the company has performed the opera only 45 times. This relative lack of attention for a mature work by Verdi is the rule throughout the operatic world. Why the opera is neglected is mysterious as it is a masterpiece with great roles for soprano, tenor, baritone, and bass. One might blame the opera’s five act format, but the Met is doing Don Carlos in the original five act French version this season. So the reason the score is mostly on the shelf lies elsewhere.
Berlioz, the king of music critics fully appreciated the opera’s worth. His review of the prima included this statement: “In Les vêpres the penetrating intensity of the melodic expressiveness, the sumptuous, wise variety of the instrumentation, the vastness and poetic sonority of the concerted pieces, the hot colour that shines throughout … communicate to this opera an imprint of grandeur, a species of sovereign majesty more distinguishable than in this composer’s earlier product.” That’s saying a lot as Vespers immediate predecessor was La Traviata. And the audience disagreed.
The story was a strange one to engage the hearts of French audiences; it depicts the massacre of the French occupiers of Sicily in 1282. That might explain why the opera failed in Paris, but not the rest of the world. Without first rate singers and a conductor who understands Verdi, the opera will not make its way; but when properly cast it is a powerful work.
The excerpt presented here is from a 1990 La Scala production under the baton of Riccardo Muti. Act 3 ends with the reaction of all the principals’ to Arrigo’s prevention of Montfort’s assassination by his lover and fellow conspirator, Elena. They are shocked at what they see as treachery on his part. The reason for his action is that he discovered in the previous act that Montfort, the French governor, is his father. Arrigo is torn between parental obligation and patriotism. The Sicilians are oblivious to this paternity and hurl obloquy at him This is one of the grandest concertatos Verdi ever wrote. It begins with a series of vocal exclamation points succeeded by a cantabile. Budden writes That,”there is no attempt to distinguish musically the different attitudes of those present. Whether appealing to [Arrigo’s] family feelings, cursing him for his treachery, or simply deploring their country’s fate all contribute to the monolithic grandeur of the line.” I Vespri Siciliani Act 3 finale
The Met seems to have a problem finding the locale of Verdi’s dark masterpiece. They moved it from Mantua to Las Vegas in 2013. That production didn’t last long; it was replaced this year by one set in the capital city of the Weimar Republic. Why? Who knows? Which site is weirder? Hard to tell. Was anything gained by the improbable geography? Nope. So why was it done? The only apparent reason is that the show was initially staged in Berlin.
Bart Sher was in charge of the production. He’s been a regular at the Met since 2006 when his staging of Rossini’s Barber was a big hit. He hasn’t reached that level in the 16 years that followed. This production isn’t going to break the streak. The setting could have been in Ruritania for all I could tell, though it was a little too seedy for that country. The uniforms were more appropriate for Central Europe in the last third of the 19th century rather than pre-Nazi Germany. Sher did solve one problem that’s always troubled me. In the last scene if the Duke is so hot for Maddalena why does he voluntarily go to sleep leaving the girl with nothing on which to base her high opinion of him? Sher has them upstairs in bed during the quartet with Gilda and Rigoletto downstairs. Thus, the Duke leaves after he’s had what he came for and Maddalena has a reason to beg her brother not to kill him.
A meteorological note. The were a lot of empty seats in the house. The show was mounted despite a severe snowstorm that obviously kept a lot of people way. Also, the Met is heavily back into masks. Maestro Daniele Rustioni looked more like Black Bart than an Italian conductor. Hiding the conductor’s facial expressions takes away a lot of his rapport with the singers and musicians.
So how were the singers? Rigoletto succeeds or not depending on the three principals, especially the baritone. I heard Quinn Kelsey sing Verdi’s unfortunate jester in Santa Fe during the 2015 season. He was quite good. Then as today he omitted some of the commonly interpolated high notes and eschewed the cries of ‘Gilda’ when he searches for his kidnapped daughter in Act 2. He has the right timbre and range for Verdi’s baritone roles. All the notes were there, except for the climatic high note as the end of the Vendetta duet which he shorted, what’s lacking is more intensity. Rigoletto is the great anti-hero who is undone not by a tragic flaw, but rather by a tragic virtue – he loves his daughter. She is his only reason for living. She’s a teenager who throws her life away intoxicated by the thrill of first love.
Rosa Feola is a young Italian soprano who has sung 11 times at the Met, all as Gilda. She has a lovely high soprano voice that she uses with sensitivity. In addition to singing the role well, her acting was appropriate. She’s still young enough to pass for a teenager – at least by the standards of opera.
Tenor Piotr Beczala made his Met debut as the Duke in 2006. This performance was his 27th shot at the libertine nobleman at the New York house. In the 15 years since his first appearance at the Met his voice has solidified to near spinto dimensions. He was very impressive in the role that every great Italian style tenor has had at the center of his repertoire over the past century and a half. Though he’s put on a few pandemic pounds, he still looks and acts the part of the Duke of Mantua who somehow wandered into Weimar Germany in about 1930.
In the smaller roles Andrea Mastroni was vocally impressive as the assassin Sparafucile, though he looked somewhat slight for the job. Varduhi Abrahamyan was equally impressive as the hitman’s for hire sister. Craig Colclough delivered the fatal curse as Monterone with gusto.
Maestro Rustioni gave a standard reading of Verdi’s familiar score. Professional, but nothing revelatory. Gary Halvorson’s camera was unobtrusive, which is what it should be for these shows. In summary, a good performance of one of opera’s essential works. I don’t know if I would have braved the snowstorm that hit the northeast to see it. Fortunately, it was sunny and in the mid 60s where I was.
Metropolitan Opera House
January 29, 2022
RIGOLETTO
Giuseppe Verdi–Francesco Maria Piave/Victor Hugo
Rigoletto……………Quinn Kelsey
Gilda……………….Rosa Feola
Duke of Mantua……….Piotr Beczala
Maddalena……………Varduhi Abrahamyan
Sparafucile………….Andrea Mastroni
Monterone……………Craig Colclough
Borsa……………….Scott Scully
Marullo……………..Jeongcheol Cha
Count Ceprano………..Christopher Job
Countess Ceprano……..Sylvia D’Eramo
Giovanna…………….Eve Gigliotti
Page………………..Catherine MiEun Choi-Steckmeyer
Guard……………….Yohan Yi
Conductor…………… Daniele Rustioni
Production…………..Bartlett Sher
Set Designer…………Michael Yeargan
Costume Designer……..Catherine Zuber
Lighting Designer…….Donald Holder
Video Director……… Gary Halvorson
Production in cooperation with Staatsoper, Berlin
An art form that focuses on the extremes of human emotions will certainly have self annihilation as a regular subject. Suicide appears so frequently in opera that I could devote scores of articles to it. It’s such a common event that it’s even stimulated medical journals to comment on it. See Four centuries of suicide in opera for a statistical discourse on the subject. For this piece I’ve chosen 15 operas that have suicides central to their plots. They have different motives and means. Some could arguably claim to be deaths under another category. Regardless, I chose them because they readily came to mind.
Verdi and Puccini account for more than half; so let’s start with them. In Act 3 of Luisa Miller, Rodolfo puts poison in drinking water and encourages Luisa to drink it. He does likewise. He thinks she has betrayed his love. He then finds out that she was forced to write him a letter declaring her love for the wonderfully named Wurm in order to save her father’s life. Too late! They both die, but not before singing some beautiful music and leaving just enough time for Rodolfo to dispatch Wurm. Rodolfo gets a trifecta here; he’s a double murderer and a suicide This excerpt is from a 1968 performance at the Met featuring Montserrat Caballé, Richard Tucker, and Sherrill Milnes.
In Act 4 scene 1 of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Leonora (soprano) drinks poison rather than give herself to a baritone. He’s got her true love, a tenor of course, in a dungeon and won’t let him go unless Leonora exchanges her person for his (the tenor’s). Everything goes wrong and only the baritone is still standing at the final curtain. The duet that results in Leonora’s fatal draught is one of Verdi’s most vigorous for soprano and baritone. The singers are Zinka Milanov and Leonard Warren.
Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino was written for the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was first performed there in 1862. In its initial form, rarely used today, the opera ended with Don Alvaro, overcome by the guilt at having killed or caused the death of all the Calatravas, jumping to his death into the nearby ravine cursing humankind. This bleak ending was replaced by the exquisite trio that leaves the remorseful Alvaro still alive. The original music from the end of ‘Pace, Pace, Mio Dio’ to the opera’s conclusion is led by Valery Gergiev and the players of the Mariinski Theater in St Petersburg. Forza original conclusion
Aida ends with the tenor (Radames) locked in a vault as punishment for treason. He will remain there until dead – either from suffocation or dehydration. To his surprise he finds that Aida has preceded him so she can share his fate. Thus he will die by execution, while she is a suicide. Renata Tebaldi and Carlo Bergonzi are the doomed lovers in this recording.
Puccini’s first of four suicides is his most famous – Tosca’s leap from atop the Castel Sant’Angelo. Maria Callas, the definitive Tosca of the last century is the jumper. She’s killed the evil police chief Scarpia and has just witnessed the execution of her lover Cavaradossi. She thought it was a mock shooting, but it was for real. Her last words as she goes airborne are O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!
Cio-Cio-san the protagonist of Madama Butterfly commits ritual suicide when she realizes how utterly betrayed she has been by the American naval officer, BF Pinkerton, who married her for 30 days. She thought it was permanent and waited for his return; it took three years during which she remained loyal. Maria Callas is Butterfly in this recording of her death scene.
Suor Angelica is the second of the three one act operas that make up Il Trittico. The unifying theme of the three seemingly unrelated operas is hidden death. Suor Angelica is the story of a young noblewoman sent to a nunnery because of an illegitimate pregnancy. Puccini’s sister was a nun. He consulted her about the daily activities of life in a convent which make up the first half of the opera. After seven years in the convent Angelica is visited by her aunt only to sign some necessary documents related to the upcoming marriage of her sister. During the encounter with her haughty aunt she learns that her child died two years ago. Distraught she takes poison only to realize that she has committed a mortal sin. She prays to the Virgin for forgiveness. As she dies she sees a vision of the Virgin and her son who rushes to her. When performed by a great singing actress this scene has the power to sweep away an audience. Angelica is commonly thought to be the weakest of the three operas. One would only say that is he had not seen the opera performed as Puccini intended. Tebaldi Angelica’s death
The only suicide presented her that doesn’t end the opera is Liu’s death in Puccini’s final and uncompleted opera Turandot. She stabs herself rather than reveal Prince Calaf’s name. This self sacrifice quiets the mob that had been clamoring for the name. Calaf after answering Turandot’s riddle had offered to submit to the murderous Princess if she could learn his name before dawn. Montserrat Caballé sings Liu’s brief aria before the fatal knife ends her life. The excerpt includes the music that follows.
Two selections from Ponchielli’s Las Gioconda: The opera’s final scene open with the aria Suicido in which Gioconda details her plan to die rather than submit to the evil baritone Barnaba – you can see a pattern in Italian opera. Caballé is again the soloist. The very end of the opera depicts Gioconda’s mock submission to the baritone brute. Just when he thinks he has her, she stabs herself. In frustration he shouts at her lifeless body that he murdered her mother the previous evening. When that grisly newsflash gets no reaction, he growls and leaves – curtain. Sherrill Milnes joins Caballé.
Next, two Wagner sopranos who do themselves in. Senta in The Flying Dutchman leaps to her death in an act of self sacrifice which frees the Dutchman of his curse of endless cruising. Berndt Weikl is the Dutchman, Cheryl Studer is the airborne soprano. Der fliegende Holländer final scene
Wagner’s Ring Cycle ends with everything back to the way they were before the marathon started. In the final scene of Götterdämmerung Brunhilde rides her horse into a fire, Valhalla burns, the Rhine overflows its banks, and the ring is restored to the Rhinemaidens. The incomparable Birgit Nilsson leads the fireworks in this performance recorded in Bayreuth under the direction of Georg Solti.
Daniel Auber’s La muette de Portici inaugurated the genre of French Grand Opera. It also has the distinction of having its title character as a mute. It takes place in Naples in 1687 during the revolt against Spanish rule led by the fisherman Masaniello. The opera is also called Masaniello. It has a complicated plot that ends during an eruption of Vesuvius. Fanella, the mute of the title and Masaniello’s sister, throws herself off a terrace on hearing of her brother’s death. Sometimes she’s said to hurl herself into Vesuvius itself. While an impossible feat, it’s not too wacky for an opera. This finale to the 5th and final act is from a production in Dessau, Germany
Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette was first performed in Paris in 1867. You know the story. It ends with a double suicide. Romeo takes poison, Juliette uses a dagger. Placido Domingo and Ruth Ann Swenson are the teenage lovers. Romeo et Juliette final scene
Massenet’s Werther is based on Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther which set off a string of copycat suicides in young men after its publication in 1787. In the opera Werther shoots himself during the interval between the opera’s final two scenes. He uses a pistol borrowed from the husband of Charlotte the woman he loves. She arrives too late to stop him from shooting himself; he is dying when she enters his room. She consoles him by declaring her love. He asks for forgiveness. After he dies, Charlotte faints. Outside children are heard singing a Christmas carol. Federica von Stade and Jose Carreras are the soloists. Werther final scene
As I said at the top, there are sufficient suicides to consume dozens of posts. But this is it for now.
The beat of a drum stirs some ancient center deep in our psyches. Opera presents numerous opportunities for percussionists. Alas, anemic conductors often fail to realize their impact. Here are a few excerpts in which the drum(s) plays an important part.
First, three by Verdi. Everybody knows the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore. The struck anvils alternate with the drums, but typically so loud are the anvils that you don’t notice the drums. On this recording from London’s Royal Opera House you can clearly hear the drums. There’s a video of this performance, but it’s too goofy to reproduce here.
In the Act 2 scene 2 of Aida (The Triumphal Scene), Aida’s father Amonasro, who is the captured Ethiopian king, is recognized as her father, but not as the king. He implores her (Aida) not to reveal his identity. He tells the Egyptians that the king is dead. This false assertion is punctuated by a dramatic beat of of the drum. It should jolt the listener, but often is rather feeble as in this example.
Verdi depicted the end of the world in the Dies Irae section of his Requiem Mass. You won’t have to search for the drum part. It almost knocks your head off. There’s a rousing Rataplan in Act III scene1 of La Forza Del Destino. Rataplan is defined as the sound of the beating of a drum.
There’s an interesting Rataplan in Act III of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. The drums are not as prominent as in the Verdi iteration.
Puccini made great use of drums in two of his operas. In Act II of Madama Butterfly Sharpless tries to read Pinkerton’s letter about Butterfly to her, but he hasn’t the heart to reveal its true contents. When he asks her what she would do if Pinkerton never returned, she says it would be better if she died. This statement is followed by the portentous thud of the drum. It’s intended to shock the audience into the reality of Butterfly’s situation. A lot of conductor’s make little of it. Not so Karajan in this recording. Maria Callas is terrific in this excerpt. The complete scene tears your heart out. Alas, Italian opera died with Puccini in 1924.
There’s just one strike of the drum in the Butterfly scene, but Puccini uses a battalion of then at the end of Act 2 of La fanciulla Del West. This is the scene in which Minnie cheats at Poker to save the life of her lover. Halfway through the scene the drum starts to beat, increasing in intensity as the scene plays out. A tympanic tour de force. Poker scene
Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci opens (after the prologue performed in front of the curtain) with the beating a drum announcing the arrival of Canio and his troupe of players; the Calabrian locals are invited to attend a performance at dusk. This is the show where everything goes murderously wrong.
The Japanese are famous for an athletic style of drum beating – Taiko drumming. Taiko is the Japanese word for drum. Early taiko drumming goes back about 1500 years. “The art of kumi-daiko, performance as an ensemble, originated post-war in Showa 26 (1951). It was created by Daihachi Oguchi, a jazz drummer who serendipitously stumbled across an old piece of taiko music. Wondering why taiko were never played together, he broke with tradition by forming a taiko drum ensemble. More recently, taiko has enjoyed not only a resurgence of interest in Japan, where there are over 4,000 taiko ensembles, but also transplantation and evolution in North America.”
The video below is a good example of Taiko. But nothing comes close to the impact this percussion playing has when heard in the flesh. It’s a raucous rush that will stay with you for a long time.
Drums have led soldiers to war for thousands of years. As shown immediately below the Brits are very good at it.
Gene Krupa (1909-73) is considered “the founding father of the modern drumset”. His drum solo on Benny Goodman’s 1937 recording of “Sing, Sing, Sing” elevated the role of the drummer from an accompanying line to an important solo voice in the band. This extended version of the number was made more than a decade after the famed Carnegie Hall concert.
Buddy Rich (1917-87) is thought by many to be the greatest drummer of all time. His techniques is awe inspiring. He often appeared with Krupa; they even made a record together.
I’ve briefly touched on the singing of the Spanish tenor Miguel Fleta (1897-1938), but until now have not devoted a full piece to him. His career was as brief and brilliant as the firing of a flashbulb. I want to mostly focus on his singing rather than his story. There are several excellent biographical sketches online – go here, here, or here (click on show more).
Briefly, he was born to a very poor family. He entered a singing contest, came to the attention of a singing teacher, whom he married and had two children with. He later divorced her and remarried and fathered four more children. After making his operatic debut, he rapidly achieved fame. He sang all over Europe, South America, and Mexico. He made his Met debut on November 8, 1923 as Cavaradossi in Tosca alongside of Maria Jeritza and Antonio Scotti. Even though the Met had Gigli, Martinelli, and Lauri-Volpi on its roster, they re-engaged Fleta for the seasons of 1925-27. He broke his Met contract to accept a more lucrative offer and was successfully sued by the Met. His American career was over.
He debuted at La Scala the year following his first Met appearance. He was so successful at the Milan house that Toscanini chose him as Calaf in the world premiere of Puccini’s final opera – Turandot. A somewhat strange choice as Aureliano Pertile was also available. Pertile’s spinto tenor was more suitable for the role than was Fleta’s voice.
Fleta was a sensation. His extraordinary ability to modulate his sound from very loud to almost inaudible without losing full vocal support drove audiences wild. It’s a talent that seems to be a gift from God. It can’t be taught. The only other tenors I know of who possessed this ability were Corelli and Di Stefano. Speaking of God, Fleta brief career gives proof to Dimitri Mitropoulos’ observation That God give voices to stableboys.
Fleta’s life was chaotic. He sang too much pushing his voice to the limit and beyond, he drank to excess, he contracted syphylis, he immersed himself in incendiary Spanish politics – on both sides! He was dead from renal failure at 40. Looking back it seems he was never properly socialized. But for a few years he had a voice unlike any other great tenor.
It’s difficult to put him in the lyric or spinto category. He sang many spinto roles, even if Calaf did not prove suitable. His 38 appearances at the Met included Don José (Carmen), Radames (Aida), Andrea Chenier, and Canio (Pagliacci) – all spinto roles. His last appearance in New York as Canio was part of a Cav and Pag double bill that had Gigli in the Mascagni opera. Nothing this luxurious was offered at the Met until Corelli and Tucker appeared together in the double bill. They did both parts jointly on different occasions.
Fleta’s sound was dark somewhat like that of Jonas Kaufmann. But, as I’ve mentioned, above it was his piano singing that set him apart from all his coevals. It was an effect that some observers thought he over used. He also tended to sometimes add vulgar adornments to his singing. Here’s E lucevan le stelle recorded about the same time as his Met debut. Terrific, easy to understand the review in Musical America of his performance as Cavaradossi: “The newcomer, Fleta, at once captured the favor of the vast audience. At the last bar of his introductory aria the throng cheered, stamped and applauded. This demonstration was richly deserved, for the young artist proved himself a singer of ability and an actor of intelligence. He used his vibrant, velvety voice with discretion and, despite the inevitable nervousness, acted his part like a graceful young cavalier. At every opportunity the audience thundered approval.”
Now listen to the same aria recorded a few years later. The great filatura is still there, but the hysterics at the end are uncalled for as are the excessive rubato and overemphasis of a few syllables. Fleta E lucevan le stelle
Celeste Aida is very well sung, but surprisingly Fleta sings the climactic B-flat fortissimo. Given his extraordinary ability to sing softly, he should have sung the aria’s conclusion as Verdi wrote it.
Vesti la giubba receives a performance unlike any other. The nuanced reading and just the right amount of pathos put Fleta at the top of the list of the innumerable recordings of this aria. The Flower Song from Carmen is an early recording (in Italian) that shows the tenor’s brilliant high notes before over singing dulled them. The Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto was another role he sang at the Met. La donna e mobile is from the last act.
La Bohème was a staple of his repertoire. Che gelida manina shows the nimbleness and flexibility of his voice. Though the high note is not as free as just a bit earlier.
A te o cara is part of an ensemble in Act 1 of Bellini’s I Puritani. I don’t believe Fleta ever sang a staged performance of the opera. This recording was made while the tenor was still in his too brief prime. Another bel canto role is Fernando in Donizetti’s La Favorita. Spirto gentil is from Act 4. Fleta’s soft singing is superb. The declamatory passages are a bit forced.
Lohengrin was also on his list. He sang the role in Barcelona in December of 1926. I’m not sure what language the performance was in. The two following excerpts are in Italian. In fernem land and Mein lieber Schwann are from Act 3 of Wagner’s most performed opera. The messa di voce effects in both arias are virtually never heard in Wagner, even in a work a lyrical as Lohengrin.
As Fleta’s vocal troubles increased – from about age 30 on – he increasingly turned to zarzuela. El Huésped del Sevillano is a 1926 zarzuela by Jacinto Guerrero (1895-1951). Mujer de los negros ojos makes no great demands on the tenor and plays to his strength. Even after his halcyon days were gone, Fleta could be very impressive with the right kind of music. The aubade from Laslo’s Le roi d’Ys was recorded around 1932 – I don’t have the exact date handy. He manages the well known piece quite well.
Fleta belongs in a special class of artist – Maria Callas is another example – one who burns away like a super nova but who has a unique gift that sets him apart from everyone else. Giuseppe Di Stefano also belongs in this rare category, though he hung around for decades after the fire was extinguished. Fortunately for the generations that came after Fleta’s brief span at the very top of the opera world, we have scores of recordings that show him at his best. He made in total about 100 recordings, all of which are still available.
More operas likely have been written, including the one that introduced the art form, about the Orpheus myth than any other subject. Today the Met’s HD series presented Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice set to a libretto by Sarah Ruhl based on her 2004 play of the same name. The story in this version is told from Eurydice’s perspective. Basically she’s a daddy’s girl who’s jealous of her husband’s attention to music. She’d rather be in Hades with her father than return to life with Orpheus. Aucoin on several interviews said his opera was about how people tend to screw things up – hardly the stuff of tragedy.
Of course, none of this would matter if the music was up to snuff, but it was mostly a lot of very brilliantly orchestrated parlando well performed by an excellent cast. The most memorable music occurred in the last act. E’s father, who’s the only soul in Hades who’s regained his memory, decides to dip himself in the river of forgetfulness. He thinks his daughter is leaving him alone in Hades to follow Orpheus – you know the story. Before taking the plunge (actually a shower – see below) he speaks, rather than sings, a set of directions to the Illinois side of the Mississippi River as the music plays. These are apparently recollections of his earthly life.
The river of forgetfulness is a shower in a box that looks like set designer Daniel Ostling found in a 100 year old junkyard. When E returns to daddy after screwing up her return to the surface, she finds him comatose in the shower. She douses herself and slumps to the tiles next to him. Orpheus then arrives already wet from another shower, or maybe the real river, his mind blank and pitiless as the sun. The opera then ends on a dismal blackout.
Erin Morley played the title role. She’s been singing at the Met since 2008. Until 2013 she appeared in comprimario roles. Then she assumed high soprano parts such as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier and Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann. Eurydice is written at the top of the soprano range. Morley handled the difficult role with aplomb, though her sound could not be described as lush or beautiful. Adequate is the best modifier, though given the difficulty that’s saying a lot. Her acting got as much as was possible from a character who’s hard to identify with. All things combined, she was very good.
Orpheus is written for two singers a baritone, (Joshua Hopkins) and a countertenor (Jakub Józef Orlinski). Billed as Orpheus Double, the countertenor always sings with the baritone. He’s supposed to represent Orpheus’ artistic personality. When Orpheus is dealing with more mundane matters, he sings alone. I could detect no obvious pattern to the joint and single singing; it just seemed another extraneous operatic device. If hearing a man sing falsetto grates like spiked shoes on slate, then the combo here is palatable as the countertenor never sings solo. Hopkins has a pleasant baritone that handed his vocally undemanding parts with grace. I can’t judge Orlinski’s voice as it was always mixed with that of Hopkins.
Canadian bass-baritone Nathan Berg made his Met debut in the role of the Father in this production. His voice is resonant and well produced. He got all the was possible from a role that never leaves the comfort zone of a bass-baritone.
The most entertaining singing and acting came from veteran tenor Barry Banks as Hades. He got to wear increasingly outrageous costumes as the work progressed. He grew horns, sprouted a tail which got longer as the show went on, and even got taller. His part lies very high, but the bel canto specialist handled the altitudinous tessitura with ease. He seemed to be having a good time as the opera’s bad guy.
The three stones which guarded the entrance to Hades were played by Stacey Tappan, Ronnita Miller, and Chad Shelton. They were rock solid.
Mary Zimmerman was in charge of the production. She had earlier assassinated both Bellini and Donizetti at the Met. She even managed to get booed by the Met’s notoriously placid audience after her staging of La Sonnambula. Her staging this time was spare and devoid of pretense or goofiness. The sets were simple and, the shower excluded, did not get in the way of the action.
This leaves the orchestra. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the Met’s virtuoso band, and it was a big one for this show, with panache and subtlety. The orchestra was so good that their leader brought all of them onstage to take a collective bow during the curtain calls.
As for the viability of the opera, I’ve only heard it twice – but I doubt it’s long term survival. Orchestration without lyricism and dramatic surge cannot carry the day. I suspect it will join all the “new” operas done at the Met not written by Puccini in the storage locker.
EURYDICE
Matthew Aucoin-Sarah Ruhl
Eurydice…………….Erin Morley
Orpheus……………..Joshua Hopkins
Orpheus’s Double……..Jakub Józef Orlinski
Father………………Nathan Berg
Hades……………….Barry Banks
Little Stone…………Stacey Tappan
Big Stone……………Ronnita Miller
Loud Stone…………..Chad Shelton
Offstage Soprano…….Lianne Coble-Dispensa
Conductor……………Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Director…………….Mary Zimmerman
Set Designer…………Daniel Ostling
Costume Designer……..Ana Kuzmanic
Lighting Designer…….T.J. Gerckens
Projection Designer…..S. Katy Tucker
Choreographer………..Denis Jones
Dramaturg……………Paul Cremo
Video Director………..Gary Halvorson
Giacomo Puccini knew as much about the workings of the theater as anyone whoever entered one. Accordingly, his mature works are models of dramatic cohesion. He lashed his librettists like galley slaves until they gave him scripts that satisficed his very high standards. These standards are why he produced only 12 operas in 40 years – three are one act works, while the last is incomplete. Tosca, his fifth opera, assigns the title role to a soprano who plays a soprano in Rome in 1800. The opera is a masterpiece of dramatic intensity combined with with a score full of inspired melodies backed by an orchestra that has Puccini’s unique sound and instrumental sheen.
The opera is through written such that the story affords little space for a traditional soprano aria. The two tenor arias come during moments of repose that allow a set piece. But how does a composer of Puccini’s genius offer an opera to the public about an operatic soprano who has no aria? He had to find a spot for a big soprano solo so he put it in the middle of the second act where it stops the action like a government mandate. The evil Baron Scarpia has to put his wicked lust on pause while Tosca emits a beautiful complaint. Later, Puccini thought about removing ‘Vissi d’arte’, but he couldn’t. First, as stated the title character has to have an aria. Second, it’s a really good piece irrespective of the plot stasis it induces.
I’ve collected 10 readings of the aria, all by famous sopranos. So often has the piece been recorded that I probably could have gone to 100. The words are below with an English translation. The vocal score is at the very bottom.
The first is by the most famous Tosca of all – Maria Callas. That Callas was a great singing actress is beyond dispute. Equally apparent is that she was also the most overpraised singer in musical history. She had, and still has, a coterie of critics who praised her beyond the realm of possibility. This recording is taken from her appearance in London in 1964. Given how much her voice had deteriorated by then, she sounds remarkably good. Of course, she can’t match her portrayal of the doomed singer that she had given in the famed complete recording of the opera in 1953. The one that also featured Giuseppe Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi under the fierce baton of Victor de Sabata. The year after this recording marked the end of Callas’s career. She was only 40. Callas Vissi d’arte
Zinka Milanov was best known as a Verdi soprano. Nevertheless, she sang Tosca 21 times at the Met, beginning in 1955 when she was well into her Met career and was 48 years old. Vocally she was superb, dramatically less so. Milanov Vissi d’arte
Leontyne Price was a great singer who got even better as she aged. Her singing of Tosca’s lament over her choice between rape or her lover’s life is lushly delivered with all the naïve sentiment the aria requires. Price Vissi d’arte
Magda Olivero made her Met debut as Tosca when she was 65 – she lived to 104. Famous in Europe for decades before the Met gave her a shot, she still had some voice left when her New York performances occurred. Why the Met waited until she was at retirement age to engage such a prominent artist is a mystery. This recording was from taken from one her 10 performances of Puccini’s diva with the company. Olivero Vissi d’arte
Birgit Nilsson was world renowned for her Puccini interpretations. But is was for her portrayal of Turandot. She also could do Minnie in La Fanciulla De West which requires a tough voiced spinto soprano. ‘Vissi d’arte’ doesn’t seem right for her cannon of a voice, one that could be heard round the world. Yet she offers a restrained and lovely rendition of the aria. Nilsson Vissi d’arte
Montserrat Caballé was famous for her dazzling pianissimo high notes. She was really a lyric soprano, but so good was her technique and vocal production that she successfully sang big roles without accumulating any collateral damage. Note how she takes the high B flat at the aria’s end and continues the phrase without taking a breath even though one is indicated in the score. No one else I can think of manages this feat. Caballé Vissi d’arte
Renée Fleming has a luminous lyric soprano voice. Though the Tosca aria is part of her concert repertoire, she has never sung the role onstage. Fleming Vissi d’arte
Angela Gheorghiu has the most beautiful sound of all the singers presented here. Tosca is at the center of her repertoire. Her combination of rich sound and elegant phrasing is hard to match Gheorghiu Vissi d’arte
Anna Netrebko is the current reigning diva. She started as a light soprano, but over time her voice matured and she added the heavy Verdi roles to her list. She sang Tosca at the Met in 2017. The version presented here starts with a bobble and a flat note, but settles into a fine rendition. Netrebko Vissi d’arte
Sonya Yoncheva is a Bulgarian soprano who has recently appeared at most of the world’s major opera houses. She set a record as first singer to appear in leading roles in three Met Opera HD telecasts in one season (Tosca, Mimi in La Bohème and Luisa Miller in the 2017/18 season). Her singing is splendid, though she clearly is not a spinto soprano, at least for now – she still on the sunny side of 40. Yoncheva Vissi d’arte
Italian opera seems to have died with Puccini. Though his glorious melodies and dramatic insight endure. ‘Vissi d’arte’ remains a showstopper in every sense of the word.
| Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,non feci mai male ad anima viva!Con man furtivaquante miserie conobbi aiutai.Sempre con fe’ sincerala mia preghieraai santi tabernacoli salì.Sempre con fe’ sinceradiedi fiori agli altar.Nell’ora del doloreperché, perché, Signore,perché me ne rimuneri così?Diedi gioielli della Madonna al manto,e diedi il canto agli astri, al ciel,che ne ridean più belli.Nell’ora del dolore,perché, perché, Signor,ah, perché me ne rimuneri così? | I lived for art, I lived for love,I never harmed a living soul!With a discreet handI relieved all misfortunes I encountered.Always with sincere faithmy prayerrose to the holy tabernacles.Always with sincere faithI decorated the altars with flowers.In this hour of grief,why, why, Lord,why do you reward me thus?I donated jewels to the Madonna’s mantle,and offered songs to the stars and to heaven,which thus did shine with more beauty.In this hour of grief,why, why, Lord,ah, why do you reward me thus? |
Vissi d’arte vocal scoreDownload
Donizetti’s comic opera L’Elisir d’Amore has been performed frequently throughout the opera world since its premiere in 1832. The Met has done it 302 times. Despite its ubiquity it sometimes seems like a tenor aria in search of an opera so popular is ‘Una furtiva lagrima’. That this search is typically successful speaks to the excellence of the music set to Felice Romani’s libretto adapted from Eugène Scribe’s book for Daniel Auber’s Le philtre (1831). Donizetti wrote the score in six weeks, which was a lengthy span for the facile composer. His output is staggering. About 75 operas, 16 symphonies, 19 string quartets, 193 songs, 45 duets, 3 oratorios, 28 cantatas, instrumental concertos, sonatas, and other chamber pieces. All this in less than 30 years. His last two years of life were disfigured by advanced neurosyphilis. He was 50 when he died.
Despite being a tenor’s opera, L’Elisir d’Amore has good parts for soprano, baritone, and basso buffo. It’s the story of a country bumpkin – let’s face it, he’s the village idiot – who’s crazy in love with the richest and best looking woman around. She secretly has feelings for him which are disguised until the end of the opera when for some inexplicable reason she declares her love for him. Her decision is said to be independent of his inheritance of a fortune from an uncle who conveniently died after the big tenor aria.
Most of the story concerns the misfortunes that the loveable moron has brought on himself. These include spending all his money on cheap red wine which he told is the same elixir of love that got Tristan and Isolde in such an amorous pickle. The itinerant huckster who sold Nemorino (tenor) the potion told him it would take 24 hours to have an effect by which time he (Dr Dulcamara basso buffo) would be gone. Nemorino promptly drinks the potion. Emboldened by the “elixir” (in fact, drunk), Nemorino feigns indifference when he encounters Adina (soprano), as he expects that the elixir will facilitate his conquest of Adina the next day. She becomes increasingly annoyed. Sergeant Belcore (baritone) proposes marriage to Adina. Upset by Nemorino and wishing to give him a lesson, Adina falsely promises to marry Belcore in six days. Yet, Nemorino only laughs in response; the potion will have worked its magic in just one day. When Belcore learns that his regiment must leave the next morning, Adina promises to marry him before his departure. This of course panics Nemorino, who cries out for Dr. Dulcamara to come to his aid. Adina, meanwhile, invites everyone to the wedding.
The finale linked below starts with Nemorino’s distress when he thinks Adina will be married before his love potion will take effect. She has no intention of wedding a baritone though Nemorino is too dim to realize what’s happening. He wants Dr Dulcamara to help him. In the next and last act the tenor enlists in Belcore’s troop and use his signup bonus to buy more elixir. Adina buys out his enlistment contract from Belcore to keep the sweet nincompoop in town and allow the inevitable happy ending.
Donizetti’s comic operas are gentler than Rossini’s. The older composer (by just five years) revels in the lunacy of human existence. His humor is in the same territory as that of the Marx Brothers. Donizetti’s comedies take a sweeter turn and allows relief from the madness of life. Adina and Nemorino will live happily ever after.
The excerpt presented here is from the complete 1970 recording of the opera featuring Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. Richard Bonynge conducts.
L’Elisir d’Amore Act 1 finale
Ferruccio Tagliavini (1913-95) was and Italian tenor famous for his mezza voce singing which was of exceptional sweetness. He made his debut in Florence in 1938 as Rodolfo in La Bohème. He was hailed as a successor to Beniamino Gigli and Tito Schipa, though his sound was much closer to the latter.
Tagliavini was born in the same year as Richard Tucker. He started out way ahead of his American contemporary, but as the Italian’s lyric voice was pushed beyond its proper compass Tucker’s tenor developed into a large spinto. Basically a tenorino, Tagliavini could not resist the temptation of the spinto roles for which his voice was not suited. The arc of his career is a common one for lyric tenors.
Though a light lyric tenor, he made his Met debut in 1947 again as Rodolfo in La Bohème. This role is for a lyric tenor, still it was a bit too heavy for Tagliavini. Nevertheless, he scored a big success at the old New York house. Over the ensuing five seasons he gave 90 performances at the Met. He appeared once in 1954 and four times in 1962 and then was gone from New York. Tucker, of course, sang with great effect until his death in 1975.
First the role of his Met debut – Rodolfo. Che gelida manina is sung with the generous use of head tones that characterized all his work. In front of a microphone his voice sounded bigger than it was in live performance.
Next examples of the roles that should have been the mainstays of his repertoire. First Ecco ridente from Rossini’s Barber. Una furtiva lagrima was in the center of the tenor’s comfort zone. He appeared in both operas during his stay at the Met. Wilhelm Meister from Thomas’ Mignon was a role cordial to Tagliavini’s voice. He did not sing the part at the Met, though the opera was given during his Met tenure. Adieu, Mignon is from Act 2. It’s sung in Italian. Mignon has received 110 performances at the Met, but none since 1949.
I don’t believe Elvino in Bellini’s La Sonnambula was performed on stage by the tenor; but it’s a part congenial to his voice. Prendi l’anel ti dono is an aria that leads into a duet for Amina and Elvino in Act 1.
Cavaradossi in Tosca was too heavy a role for Tagliavini’s light voice. Nevertheless he sang it often – 15 times at the Met, alone. His reading of E lucevan le stelle, however, is well done.
Le Reve from Massenet’s Manon was an excellent fit for Tagliavini. ‘Ah! fuyez, douce image’ in the ensuing St Sulpice scene was not. A tenor who can fully realize both arias is a rarity. You would suppose that ‘Je crois entendre encore’ from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers would be as equally good fit, but the tenor runs into a bit of unsteadiness at the end. He sings it in Italian as Mi par d’udir ancor.
Federico’s lament from Cilea’s L’Arlesiana receives a good rendition from the tenor. He recorded the complete opera for Cetra in 1951 alongside his wife soprano Pia Tassinari. Finally an aria from an opera Tagliavini should not have been allowed to approach even as a member of the audience. Ch’ella mi creda from the last act of The Girl of The Golden West requires a big spinto like Franco Corelli or Richard Tucker, both of whom sang the role (Dick Johnson) at the Met. Tagliavini does better than one would have thought. Here the microphone is his friend.
Sweetness can only take you so far. It can sometimes be too much. Still, Tagliavini at his best was worth a special trip to the opera house, especially if it were one not of the gargantuan size of either the old or new Met. His career trajectory should have been that of Schipa who preceded him or Cesare Valletti who came a bit later than Tagliavini’s appearance on the international stage.
Click on the red links to access the referenced audio file.
Given the florid character of opera, it’s no surprise that curses are a frequent feature of the genre. I’ve collected 12 examples from eight operas that involve the imprecation. I’ll start with the opera that was once named La Maledizione – The Curse. Of course it’s Rigoletto. The plot is entirely driven driven by a curse.
Rigoletto is one of opera’s sublime masterpieces. It combines melodic invention of the highest order with a dramatic impact that is equally inspired. Stravinsky said of ‘La donna e mobile’, “I say that in the aria ‘La donna è mobile’, for example, which the elite thinks only brilliant and superficial, there is more substance and feeling than in the whole of Wagner’s Ring cycle.” In the opera’s first scene Rigoletto mocks Monterone whose daughter was seduced by the Duke. After the helpless father is arrested on the Duke’s order, he curses both. The Duke is unimpressed, but the superstitious jester is terrified by the curse. He has a teenage daughter whom he keeps, unsuccessfully, sequestered. Monterone’s curse. The opera’s last scene displays the realization of the curse. Gilda having sacrificed herself to save the Duke who had raped her in Act 2 dies in her father’s arms after which he cries La Maledizione.
Gounod’s Faust starts with a curse. The aged Faust curses faith and hope and calls for the devil who swiftly arrives. But there’s more to come. In Act 4 Valentin fights a duel with Faust now made young. With the help of Méphistophélès he fatally wounds Marguerite’s brother who with his dying words curses her for having been debauched by Faust. In the church scene of Act 4 (the order of the act’s scenes is often changed) Méphistophélès assisted by his choir of devils curses Marguerite.
Verdi has more curses. Nabucco’s tenor lead Ismaele is probably the most inconsequential leading tenor role in the composer’s canon. Yet he manages to be cursed twice by his fellow Israelites and for the same offense. He saved Nabucco’s daughter Fenena. The first curse is at the end of Act 1, it leads to a vocal thunderbolt that has more energy than the sun. The second is in Act 2 scene 2 and is relatively tame compared to the first.
In Verdi’s Luisa Miller Rodolfo says he accursed after poisoning both Luisa and himself. He falsely thought her unfaithful to their love when she was acting to save her father. He finds out the truth just after they’ve swallowed the fatal draught. Luisa Miller Ah! Maledetto
Verdi’s most compelling curse, likely the most dramatically effective, ends the great Council Chamber scene in Simon Boccanegra. This scene was written for the 1881 revision that Verdi did with Arrigo Boito. Simon’s daughter Amelia has escaped abduction engineered by the Doge’s courtier Paolo. Simon had forbidden Paolo’s marriage to her which prompted the foiled kidnapping. Simon forces Paolo (Simon knows he was behind the plot) to curse the unnamed assailant. Paolo who is as superstitious as Rigoletto is horrified at cursing himself. The opera’s rewrite was Boito’s audition for the later librettos of Otello and Falstaff. The Council Chamber scene is one of opera’s enduring achievements. Simon Boccanegra Paolo curses himself
In Madama Butterfly Cio-Cio-san has secretly converted to Christianity prior to her wedding to Lt Pinkerton, the US Navy’s candidate for Shame of the Century award. Her uncle the Bonze has found out about the conversion and shows up uninvited. He curses the bride and orders everyone to leave which they do. The glorious love duet follows. Madama Butterfly Bonze’s curse
Wagner being Wagner, Isolde’s curse take more than 10 minutes. This one is from Act 1 of Tristan und Isolde. The Irish princess Isolde tells her maid Brangäne about how Tristan using a pseudonym killed her fiancé Morold. It’s more complicated than I care to relate. Eventually, always a long time in Wagner, they drink a love potion substituted for poison by Brangäne. Here it is in all its prolix glory. Isolde’s Narrative and Curse
There’s only one way to settle oneself after a drink of Wagner and that’s with a tipple of Rossini. This excerpt is from Act 2 of Il Turco in Italia. It mentions a cursed old man – Questo vecchio maledetto. Rossini is better than Zoloft. If he can’t raise your spirits, call your mortician.
There are more curses, but this is as much negativism as I can handle now. Stay friendly – turn off the news.
I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. In a repeat of the 2014 telecast of Werther featuring Jonas Kaufmann, the signal from the Met’s broadcast of Fire Shut Up In My Bones was lost at the opera’s climax and did not return until the middle of the curtain calls. I was told by the theater’s personnel that this likely happened in all the sites receiving the telecast. I don’t know if such was the case, but here’s the opera’s last 10 minutes taken from the performance of October 19. Fire Shut Up In My Bones finale. As was the case with the Massenet opera, this technical failure was a crushing end to a great performance.
The Met is so woke that a constant Haldol IV drip could not make it miss a social justice moment. At the same time it was trying to stiff its musicians and stagehands by cutting their salaries, it hired a highly paid Director of Diversity. What is they supposed to do beyond what’s already being done? If the Met gets any more diverse, Peter Gelb will be selling single cigarettes on Broadway. The company reopened after a COVID induced aphasia of 18 months with the first opera by a black composer ever staged by the company. A work based on the memoir of a far left black journalist, Charles Blow, with an all black cast. These characteristics were enough to ensure a rapturous response from the Met’s woke audience and critics. Despite all the posturing, Terence Blanchard’s opera is the best new work to appear at the Met in decades. Sometimes craziness is not enough to subdue high quality.
Blanchard’s music is tinged with a bit of jazz and a lot of rhythmic and emotional content. It starts with its weakest music – a parlando writing that resembles many other recent operas. But once the scene shifts to the chicken factory where Charles’ mother Billie works, the pace quickens and doesn’t falter for the duration of the opera. Blanchard’s vocal line is right in the sweet spot of all the performers. His orchestral writing is bright and brilliant. It makes full use of a modern orchestra and includes a jazz band which gives the sound an apposite tinge.
The story centers on Charles’ sexual abuse by his cousin Chester when he was 7 years old. The young Charles (called Char’es-Baby) appears throughout the piece singing along with the mature Charles. This pairing works better than it might seem away from the stage. The opera focuses on the scar and sexual confusion the abuse left on Charles, a condition not dealt with until the opera’s end – the conclusion we didn’t get to see or hear.
The work’s dramatic intensity captures the audience’s attention and builds on itself as the story unfolds. The opera is a cohesive whole, but a few highlights are worth mentioning. The music to the ballet that opens Act 2 is lovely. The dancers depict Charles’ homoerotic thoughts that constantly trouble him. Charles’ aria in the same act is powerful and moving. A quintet, for Charles and his four brothers, depict his and their satisfaction about his getting laid for the first time. There’s a lot of “adult language” in Klasi Lemmon’s libretto. Her lines effectively rhyme. The fraternity initiation was well staged and danced. The duet between Charles and his first love Greta was moving.
The huge cast of singers and dancers were all first rate – not a blemish among them. Four deserve further mention. First, Will Liverman as Charles; he was onstage throughout the performance, save for the chicken factory scene. He gave a searing performance as the opera’s tormented protagonist. Liverman has a rich baritone that seems ready for the standard baritone repertoire. He’s due to sing Papageno in The Magic Flute at the Met later this season. His part in Fire… does not have any very high notes in it, so I can’t tell if he would be right for Verdi. Angel Blue played three roles. Destiny, Loneliness, and the corporeal Greta. She was in lush voice, as is now expected given the excellence of her previous work at the Met. The first two spirits speak to Charles alone. They encourage whatever behavior he’s engaging in when they address him. Latonia Moore was titanic as the put upon mother of five sons fathered by a faithless husband; she wants a better life for her gifted youngest son and for herself. Char’es-Baby was deftly portrayed by the 13 year old Walter Russell III.
The Met’s orchestra played brilliantly under the dynamic baton of the Met’s music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin who wore a shirt made for him by the costume department of the company, but which looked like he got it at Waikiki. The sets were very simple consisting of frames augmented by projections that were better than any previously used by the company.
The Met’s vast resources and extraordinary production values were responsible for some of the opera’s success. How the opera would work in a smaller house and with lesser singers and players is difficult to assess. But it was first performed in St Louis in a much smaller theater. I think the work’s quality is sufficient allow it success in most venues, provided the right singers are engaged.
I know I’ve carped about this before, but Garty Halvorson’s video direction had too many really close close-ups.
In summary, I think Blanchard’s opera is a keeper. It should be brought back ASAP. If the Met can restage Akhnaten, they should do Fire… on a regular basis. If you missed the show, or even if you were at the first telecast, don’t skip the encore this coming Wednesday. Hopefully, it will be done to the end.
FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES Oct 23, 2021
Terence Blanchard-Kasi Lemmons
Charles……………………..Will Liverman
Destiny/Loneliness/Greta………Angel Blue
Billie………………………Latonia Moore
Uncle Paul…………………..Ryan Speedo Green
Spinner……………………..Chauncey Packer
Char’es-Baby…………………Walter Russell III
Chester……………………..Chris Kenney
Evelyn………………………Brittany Renee
Pastor/Kaboom………………..Donovan Singletary
Verna……………………….Denisha Ballew
William……………………..Cheikh M’Baye
Nathan………………………Oleode Oshotse
James……………………….Ejiro Ogodo
Robert………………………Judah Taylor
Foreman……………………..Norman Garrett
Chicken Plucker/Adult William….Terrence Chin-Loy
Ruby/Woman Sinner…………….Briana Hunter
Young Lovely…………………Marguerite Mariah Jones
Bertha………………………Cierra Byrd
Adult Robert…………………Calvin Griffin
Adult Nathan…………………Errin Duane Brooks
Pledge………………………David Morgans Sanchez
Nash………………………..Chase Taylor
Women: Denisha Ballew, Christine Jobson, Jasmine Muhammad, Kimberli Render, Nicole Joy Mitchell, Karmesha Peake
Orchestra Rhythm Section:
Bryan Wagorn, Piano
Matt Brewer, Bass
Adam Rogers, Guitar
Jeff Watts, Drums
Conductor……………………Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Co-Director………………….James Robinson
Co-Director………………….Camille A. Brown
Set Designer…………………Allen Moyer
Costume Designer……………..Paul Tazewell
Lighting Designer…………….Christopher Akerlind
Projection Designer…………..Greg Emetaz
Choreographer………………..Camille A. Brown
Video Director………………. Gary Halvorson