Falstaff Scores Not at the Teatro Farnese di Parma

From Seen and Heard International
By: José M. Irurzun
G. Verdi. Falstaff: Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus Teatro Regio di Parma, Andrea Battistoni (conductor), Teatro Farnese di Parma. 10.10.2011 (JMI)

Photo courtesy Teatro Regio di Parma, © Roberto Ricci

This premiere of Falstaff marks the end of my stay in Parma this year. It wasn’t a case of saving-the-best-for-last, largely due to the problems of successfully performing opera in the acoustics of the magnificent yet fatally flawed Teatro Farnese. As I wrote on the occasion of Verdi’s Requiem (read S&H review), this is a very beautiful theater that is worth visiting, but not appropriate for a staged performances. The acoustics leave much to be desired and the view from the back stalls is so restricted that many spectators of these chairs moved to the stands at the first interval, taking advantage of the many empty seats available.

Parma’s Verdi Festival staged a new production by Stephen Medcalf whose work I have not found particularly exciting, an opinion that this direction did not change. A new production of Falstaff that only repeats on stage what we have seen so many times before is hardly justified. The sets are simple with a wood panel enclosing the stage with some painted motives on Windsor. The stage is filled with a large bed at in the Garter Inn, a large laundry basket and some folding screens plus a module with stairs in Ford’s house, and finally, a large oak in the last act. Been there, seen that, nothing new. The Shakespeare period costumes are attractive; mainly those of the ladies. The same goes for the stage direction which differs only from the many other traditional productions in that Sir John’s page is suited with full armor.
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A Tosca for our Times: Sondra Radvanovsky in Madrid

From Seen and Heard International
By: José MªIrurzun
G. Puccini, Tosca: Soloists, Madrid Symphonic Orchestra, Intermezzo Chorus, Renato Palumbo (conductor). Madrid Teatro Real. 28.07.2011 (JMI)

Production Teatro Real in coproduction with ABAO (Asociación Bilbaina de Amigos de la Ópera).

This performance of Tosca brings Madrid’s 2010/11 opera season 2010-2011 to an end. With this new cast Tosca worked better than it did at the premiere on July 12th. (Review on S&H here.) Renato Palumbo had better control of matters, too particularly the first act had much more tension.
The new Floria Tosca was American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, wildly popular with the crowd. The evolution of this soprano is quite amazing: She now displays a voice of great volume with a very wide middle range, while having lost nothing of her ease at the high notes. She continues to be an outstanding singer and a remarkable performer on stage, even if her very distinctive voice is not to everybody’s liking: Its color is probably the darkest you will find today, with a characteristic vibrato in the middle register, not unanimously loved. She is a true spinto, perhaps the most important today, and she is foremost a rare voice. Moreover, her Tosca is very temperamental and credible, as it should be. She belongs to the category of Toscas who don’t need a knife to kill Scarpia; her order “Muori, damnato, muori!” alone should be enough. Not everything was superb in her vocal delivery, but she was a successful Tosca.
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At the Olympic Music Festival, the Voice Prevails in a Chamber Concert

From Seen and Heard International
By: Bernard Jacobson

Mozart, Brahms, et al : Stefan Hersh (violin), Alan Iglitzin (viola), Daniel Montenegro (tenor), Paul Hersh (piano), Jeffrey Fair (horn), Olympic Music Festival, Quilcene, WA. 24.7.2010 (BJ)

The idea that, on a program beginning with a Mozart duo and ending with Brahms’s great Horn Trio, a group of Italian and Spanish-language songs would provide the biggest musical satisfactions was fairly unthinkable in advance. Yet that, thanks to the local debut of a charismatic 32-year-old tenor, is what happened on the fifth weekend of this year’s Olympic Music Festival.

It is always exciting to be present when a new star makes his or her entrance on the scene, and it was unmistakably clear within the first half-dozen notes of Paolo Tosti’s Malia that we were witnessing such an entrance. Daniel Montenegro, born in southern California and currently an Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera, is a perfectly phenomenal singer, and musician – both categories are needed here, because they are not always coterminous. I shall be very much surprised if he does not take a prominent place among the ranks of feted tenors in the coming years.

The voice, it was evident at once, is gorgeous. Montenegro might be well termed a spinto tenor, for he blends the grace and delicacy of the lyric voice with something of the clarion firmness of a heroic tenor. A master of vocal coloration, he can shade his tone away in the most ravishing manner without losing strength of line. He has a sense of pathos, as well as a lively sense of humor, the latter being pleasantly exercised in his unpretentious introductory comments.
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