The Met’s Telecast Stifles The Romantic Mood In Lucia di Lammermoor

The unending close-ups and ‘pseudo-artistic’ camera angles shot by video director, Gary Halvorson, came close to deflating the emotion out of the February 7th Telecast of G. Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. In Act One, he ran so many quick facial shots, it seemed there was one for each musical measure. He also interjected some unwieldy camera angles from the floor that distorted the singers’ figures.

In Acts Two and Three, however, he calmed down by holding some of the shots longer, leading to smoother camera transitions that gave the viewer more time to focus on a work that is considered the prime example of 19th Century Romantic Opera. In the end, however, the telecast and the forces that surrounded the work – the interviews, the stage direction and the cinematic choices – proved overpowering for Donizetti’s music and the poetry in the Salvatore Cammarano’s libretto that both men so skillfully adapted to represent their beloved genre.

French soprano Natalie Dessay was the afternoon’s host. Since she was the Lucia in the production’s premiere last year, she looked like a good bet to entertain and inform, and entertain she did with big dollops of opinion disguised as information. She started her interview with director Mary Zimmerman with a warning not to mention the music as one of her reasons for directing the opera. So Zimmerman proceeded to tell us the reason she likes directing opera is the challenge of working in a big space. Dessay was cautious in her talk with conductor Marco Armiliato knowing the guy was going to spill the beans and say how much he loved the music. Recognizing his sincerity she had no choice but to listen in silence.
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Monteverdi, L’Orfeo

By Bernard Jacobson

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

Ensemble La Venexiana, cond. and dir. Claudio Cavina, The Moore Theater, Seattle, 8.2.2009 (BJ)

The Early Music Guild and its executive director, August Denhard, put Seattle much in their debt with a three-performance visit by the Venetian ensemble La Venexiana. This was the first US presentation of the ensemble’s production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, perhaps the most popular of the composer’s three great operas, but still a masterpiece honored more often in theory than in actual performance.

So far as the music went, La Venexiana–originally just a madrigal group, but now more ambitious in its repertoire–achieved what might well be called a triumph. Twenty instrumentalists, playing period instruments ranging from the violin family by way of cornetti and brass to organ, regal, and a pair of handsome theorbos, produced incisive sonorities that were rendered all the more delectable by the extreme accuracy of their intonation. And there were some remarkably fine voices on display too, most notably in Emanuela Galli’s rich-toned and stylish impersonations of La Musica and Euridice, Mirko Cristiano Guadagnini’s grandly authoritative Orfeo, Salvo Vitale’s darkly sonorous Caronte, and Matteo Bellotto’s strong and sympathetic Plutone.

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Handel, Grieg, Wolf, Poulenc, Barber, Bizet

By Harvey Steiman

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

Danielle de Niese, soprano; Ken Noda, piano; presented by Cal Performances, Hertz Hall, University of California at Berkeley. 8.2.2009 (HS)

Danielle de Niese, best known for her glittering stage presence in Handel operas, opened her recital Sunday in Berkeley, California, with two arias from Handel’s Semele. Singers like to start with the familiar before venturing out into foreboding territory, but it was not a good sign that the silvery, mercurial coloratura that serves her so well on the opera stage seemed to desert her here. She lent a coy sexiness to “Endless Pleasure, Endless Love” and “Myself I Shall Adore” but the music, despite vibrant playing from pianist Ken Noda, never lifted off. By all rights, these songs should have catapulted the program into high gear, but they deserved the tepid response they got from the half-filled house.

The problem, which she never quite overcame, was getting the voice in focus. Here, and throughout the program, she seemed to be oversinging, pushing the sound rather that letting it float untethered. Hertz Hall, with 600 seats, is not so big that she needed to do that. And indeed, she did her best singing when she throttled back in softer passages. Singing loud, the lyric voice took on a hard edge that kept the music from gathering momentum. Otherwise, she showed such fine musical values, understanding of the texts, attention to pace and rhythm, that it was doubly disappointing that the sound missed the mark.

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