Living at the Opera

By Harvey Steiman

Reprinted with permission from Seen and Heard - Music Web’s Live Opera, Concert and Recital Reviews.

Ireland, Vaughan Williams, Schubert, Fauré, et al: Bryn Terfel, bass baritone; Malcolm Martineau, piano. Presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall, University of California at Berkeley, 17.4.2008 (HS)

Not many vocal recitalists can hold a capacity crowd of 2,000 in rapt silence with a stage presence so casual as Bryn Terfel did Thursday night in Berkeley. He was so easy-going and friendly he might have been getting up from a dinner party to sing a few tunes to while away the evening. If there is a more relaxed performer in the sometimes stultifying world of classical recitals, it’s hard to think of who it might be.

As an opera singer, Terfel is best known for inhabiting his oversized stage roles, such as Verdi’s Falstaff, Mozart’s Figaro or Stravinsky’s Nick Shadow, thoroughly and naturally. His resonant bass baritone voice seems to pour out of him without artifice or strain, so easily that sometimes it’s dumbfounding to hear. Shouldn’t making sounds like that be more difficult than it looks?

Despite this apparent nonchalance, it was the level of detail that made Terfel’s singing so compelling in this recital. In song after song, he brought out telling nuances in the words or the vocal line. His diction in English, Italian, German—it didn’t seem to matter what language he sang—was impeccable. A hesitation here or a change of tone there, enriching the sound on one phrase and floating velvety soft lines on others, made the songs come to life and feel fresh. Pianist Malcolm Martineau seemed to be breathing with Terfel, not surprising as they have collaborated in recitals for years.

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L to R: Robb Harrison, Nathan Krueger, Kristin Griffeath, Dennis Tamblyn, Adam Shelton, Robyn Rocklein and Meray Boustani. Ingvi Kallen UA School of Music

In an interview in the Tucson Weekly a week before the U of A Opera Theater’s first performance of Dominick Argento’s Postcard from Morocco on April 4th, Charles Roe, the program’s artistic director stated that although music director and conductor Thomas Cockrell was convinced that mounting Argento’s surrealistic work would be a good step for the Opera Theater’s next venture into American Opera, Roe’s “first impression wasn’t as positive.” After all, Roe had directed two popular works in the idiom - Mark Adamo’s Little Women and Kerke Mechem’s Tartuffe - productions that were not only enthusiastically received, but artistically on the money. It’s true Argento’s opera is a favorite among many university opera programs, but the opera is filled with numerous musical tangents and vocal lines that keep the singers running up and down the scale throughout the work. Besides that, the orchestra was placed over on stage left, out of the singer’s view of conductor Cockrell. Even with stage monitors helping the performers follow Cockrell as he led them through Argento’s musical mix of Ragtime melodies, waltz tunes popping up here and there, and pieces of Richard Wagner’s Ring thrown in as a tribute to one of Argento’s favorite composers, there was a good chance this production could prove to be risky business.

Whatever the musical and dramatic complexities of Argento’s ninety minute opera were, Roe and his forces met every challenge head on. In fact, one could say, this production was one of the most well-prepared and imaginative outings mounted by the U of A’s Opera Theater.

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By Bernard Jacobson

Reprinted with permission from Seen and Heard - Music Web’s Live Opera, Concert and Recital Reviews

Seattle Opera Young Artists Program, soloists, members of the Auburn Symphony, cond. Brian Garman, dir. Peter Kazaras; Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue, WA, 6.4.2008 (BJ)

Cast for L’Enfant et les sortilèges - Picture © Rozarii Lynch

I should have had more faith. The prospect of Ravel’s masterpiece of enchanted childhood set, not in a room and garden, but in a subway station was the reverse of alluring. How could it possibly achieve the ravishing effect of the transformation from room to garden, which I shall never forget from the first time I ever saw the piece staged, fully half a century ago, by the Oxford University Opera Society?

Well, Peter Kazaras, artistic director of Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program, has worked magic before–in last season’s Falstaff, most notably – and he worked it again in this wonderful production. Eschewing the more obvious enchantments of Colette’s libretto, to focus instead on the surreal qualities of the story, he made L’Enfant more universal than ever, liberating it, as it were, from the outward trappings of one particular French-bourgeois context. The customary nursery-age infant was replaced by a rebellious teenager, and the putative animals by humans with mildly animal characteristics. It was the kind of directorial intervention that I usually find counter-productive. But Kazaras, it’s no exaggeration to say, is a genius of a director, and when he does it, it works.

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