Living at the Opera

From Seen and Heard International
By: José M Irurzun; Picture © Javier del Real
Soloists, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid. Coro Intermezzo. Conductor: Jesús López Cobos. Teatro Real de Madrid. 19 and 20.1.2010 (JMI)

Anja Kampe as Senta.

The new year starts in Madrid with these performances of Wagner’s Dutchman, a work that
has not been performed at the Teatro Real since the end of 19th century, except for a visit by Berlin Staatsoper a few years back. The current performances of this opera have been good rather than brilliant, although clearly better than those seen lately in Barcelona and Seville.

This co-production between Barcelona’s Liceu and Madrid’s Teatro Real has stage direction by Àlex Rigola and was premiered at the Liceu some three years ago. The production moves the action to modern times, which is acceptable, bearing in mind this is a legend which can fit any era. Rigola is a man of the theatre but this time he concentrated mostly on the aesthetics, rather than the stage action, almost as if it was not greatly important. Act I takes place on two levels: the berthing quay and the bridge of the Norwegian boat, each stage perfectly adequately, particularly at the arrival of the Dutch ship. In Act II, Daland’s home becomes the dining room of Daland and Co. since Daland is shown as an industrialist. The room has a soft drinks machine and large windows at the back, through which we can see the ocean. The last act takes place in the breakwater next to Daland’s factory with spectacular projections of waves hitting the breakwater stones. The weakest parts of the production are the actual stage direction and an inability to draw decent standards from the large chorus: a few stage management details, achieved more or less well enough with extras are not sufficient to ensure the production’s success.

Musical direction was the responsibility of Jesús López Cobos, who produced a performance much in line with others he has conducted in recent years – an effective and clean reading, always under control but with a certain imbalance between the brass section and the strings, particularly in the Overture. López Cobos delivered his best work in the final act and overall I would say that his performance was rather better than some he has given recently although still rather short of romantic atmosphere. The orchestra played very well though, certainly much better than anything heard in Barcelona three years ago, and some fine chorus work was a very nice surprise.
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From Seen and Heard International
By: José M Irurzun; photo © E. Moreno Esquibel.

Soloists, Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa. Coro de Ópera de Bilbao. Conductor: Sir Mark Elder, Palacio Euskalduna de Bilbao. 16.1.2010 (JMI)

Ernani is one of the best Verdi operas from the so-called ‘years in the galleys’ so far as I am concerned, although it is a long time since it lost the favour of the big opera houses. Certainly its irregular libretto and its need of four truly great singers – no less than Trovatore – can explain some of this hardly justified oblivion but in the last 10 years the opportunities to enjoy this opera in decent conditions have been very few. I dare say in fact that only the United States has staged the work with more or less with great singers, the last of them this season in Chicago with Sondra Radvanovsky (to me the best Elvira today). Three years ago it was given at the Metropolitan with Radvanovsky again, accompanied by Giordani, Hampson and Furlanetto and before that at Carnegie Hall some 12 years ago – it appeared in a concert version with a surprising June Anderson as Elvira. Appearances of the title in Europe have also been very scarce, mostly in Italy and for the most part with rather mediocre casts, with the exception of Trieste some three years back. Sadly, this ABAO performance was closer to Italian mediocrity than to American splendour.

ABAO’s new production was directed by Michal Znaniecki from Poland. On paper, the selection couldn’t have been more fortunate, judging by his other operatic works in recent years, all characterized by good taste and respect for the music and singers. Unfortunately, this did not happen this time. The staging was dominated by a large gothic rose window partially raised, creating a stage with a slope of about 40 degrees. In these circumstances the movements by soloists, chorus and extras showed their worries about falling over all to clearly and adversely projected lots of extraneous noise into the theatre. The singers had to share their focus on singing wth concerns for physical security and to this I should add the fact that often Znaniecki made them sing from the top of the rose window, damaging projection of the voices – which otherwise only came into its own when the performers sang from the front of the stage. In these circumstances the direction of actors was fairly well impossible, not to mention the lack of mass direction, which was little better than a concert version. The drama of big scene of act III, with the company in the rose window and the Emperor placed behind them, was completely missed.
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Since the January 16th, HD Telecast of Carmen was sold out here in Tucson, (livingattheopera.com will attend the Encore performance) it afforded the opportunity to listen to and tape the radio broadcast and to compare it to the upcoming telecast on February 3rd. .

The standout event in the broadcast was not a happy one. It sounded quite uncomfortable to hear how Roberto Alagna botched the ending of Don Jose’s aria La fleur que tu m’avais jetée in Act Two. From the beginning of the opera, Alagna used only a mezzo-forte to forte dynamic level. Unfortunately, there were no vocal shadings of the text that would have allowed listeners to appreciate the tenor’s native French. So when the aria arrived, which he delivered in the same fashion, he opted to sing the final B flat piano instead of forte as it is written. The tenor not only failed to hit the note, but caused the dramatic intensity to flatten out for the remainder of the act.

The role, however, is a great emotional match for Alagna’s personality, so the Act Four duet with Elina Garanca’s Carmen proved to be a searing vocal and dramatic experience for the listener. Their passion and talent vividly captured the duo’s last tragic moments.

Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Escamillo was a last minute replacement for Mariusz Kwiecien. With only the vocals to consider, the baritone sounded as if he used all his vocal resources to get through the performance. The bull fighter’s nonchalant personality masks the role’s demands for a voice with a more solid frame.

Garanca’s Carmen sounded full-voiced and committed, even if some Gallic flavor in the voice was missing. Barbara Frittoli’s Micaela came across with a steady pleasing tone. .

There has been talk about the fast tempi in Vannick Nézet-Séguin’s conducting style. It carried over into an intermission feature where the conductor gave his reasons why he used them. The speed of his opening bars in Act One sounded as if he wanted to make everyone remember his name.

After the second act, Rene Fleming met up with Garanca and Alagna as they came off stage. On the radio, all three sounded somewhat nervous and anxious about having to do one of these “required” intermission chats after Alagna’s vocal mishap. It will be interesting to match the voices with the body language at the Encore performance on February 3rd.

From Seen and Heard International
By: José M Irurzun; Picture © Antoni Bofill
Soloists, Orquestra Simfònica y Coro del Gran Teatre del Liceu.Conductor: Marco Armiliato. Gran Teatre del Liceu de Barcelona. 13.14 & 15. 12. 2009 (JMI)

Verdi’s Trovatore had not been performed at Barcelona’s Liceu since the1992–93 season, which is extremely strange, taking into account the enormous popularity of this opera. It is not surprising, then, that the public filled the house for the 19 performances given during the month of December.

The Belgian Gilbert Deflo was responsible for this new, minimalist production of the opera. I have nothing against this style, which is so frequent nowadays, provided they have outstanding stage direction and excellent lighting. Sadly, this production is quite weak in both aspects. Characters enter the stage, sing with little intent and then leave, and this is disastrous. The lack of expression in some of the performers would make a newcomer to this opera unable to decide whether Manrico or the Count was the hero.

The sets consist of a few painted fabric curtains at the back of the stage. The costumes are timeless but the lighting is particularly poor. I can assure you that I have seen much better stage direction in some concert versions.

Marco Armiliato was in charge of the musical direction and his reading was bland and routine for the first cast, improving for the other two. Rather unusually for this conductor I found some of his tempi rather slow, although the orchestra gave a good performance in general. Regarding the chorus, I found the female section stunningly good during the convent scene. From a purely musical point of view the best performance of the three I saw was the second.

These Trovatore performances had three different vocal casts. It is difficult enough these days to put together one acceptable cast, so you can imagine the difficulties involved in assembling three.

The Italian Marco Berti was a disappointing Manrico in the first cast. He has the voice for the character, but he was unable to transmit the slightest emotion to the auditorium. He was emotionally flat in “Ah si ben mio” and in the following Pira he maintained the top note longer than he did at the premiere, which was televised. Manrico needs better singing. In the second cast we had the Korean Alfred Kim, whose voice is more lyrical than the character demands, but he gave some meaning to his singing, something which had not happened the previous day with Marco Berti. Kim’s voice is pleasant and consistent through the whole range, and he is quite courageous and believable on stage. His performance was more than acceptable, although he had some problems in his aria, while his voice was quite vivid for the Pira. The Albanian Giuseppe Gipali has a beautiful voice, but he is rather inexpressive in his singing. His biggest handicap is that his instrument is quite small and this cannot work in a heroic role like Manrico.
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Opera research tells us that, at first, Giuseppe Verdi was considering “Azucena” as the name for his 1853 opera, Il Trovatore. If the composer were still alive and had attended the opera’s December 22nd performance at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, he very well might have. There was no doubt while watching the telecast at the Loft Cinema on the same date, that mezzo-soprano Luciana D’Intino captured one of the most intriguing and vocally-effulgent interpretations of Verdi’s gypsy outcast this opera lover has ever heard. D’intino’s vocal ease and textual command of the role was in the tradition of two of Italy’s best interpreters from the past, Giulietta Simionato and Fiorenza Cossotto. And the audience was very fortunate to hear and see her, for what remained was one of the dullest performances of Verdi’s magnificent musical masterpiece.

For once, the physical side of the production was not the culprit in the show. The sets, costumes, and lighting by William Orlandi were in vogue with many of the opera productions of today. They combined a style reminiscent of older times with the sleek lines of today. Orlandi’s unit set was composed of white side walls and back scrims that changed from the orange sun of daylight to the dusky blue of nighttime. Orlandi’s work followed Director’s Gilbert Deflo’s concept of chiaroscuro in Salvatore’s Cammarano’s text. (By the way, one remarkable thing about the libretto is how the librettist was able to wheedle down the verbosity in Antonio García Gutiérrez’s long romantic drama typical of early 19th Century Spain.) The set designer also carried the day/night theme over to his costumes. They had a hint of 15th Century soldiers’ uniforms united with the clean lines of modern-day dress. This was most apparent in the plastic sheen of the blue and red helmets of the opposing armies with both clad in black soft-shelled armor. He dressed the heroine Leonora in one costume only: a long white, tailored tunic. Beautiful though it was, it got a little boring to look at by opera’s end. As a matter of fact, ennui was something that plagued the whole production, even making Marco Armiliato’s conducting seem routine.
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From Seen and Heard International
By: José M Irurzun; Picture courtesy of the Palau de Les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia
(below)Oksana Dyka as Cio Cio San

After opening its opera season with Berlioz’s Les Troyens, Valencia returned to box-office security by programming Madama Butterfly, last performed here in April 2008. Some would say it is far from interesting to repeat these operas within such a short period of time, but the public does not seem to agree with that view and the eight performances are already sold out.

On the previous occasion the production was by Keita Asari, from La Scala. This time, we were presented with one of Mariusz Trelinski’s productions. I say one of his productions because, to my knowledge, there are two – the one seen in Valencia and the production being performed at the same time at the Mariinski Theatre. The productions are very similar, although chronologically the Valencia Butterfly had its premiere in Warsaw in 1999, while the Mariinski one was premiered in 2005. Mariusz Trelinski is one of the stage directors preferred by Placido Domingo and Valery Gergiev and both have presented several of his productions in the theatres they manage.

I found Trelinski’s production quite appealing aesthetically, but rather uneven and only able to carry the emotion of Puccini’s work here and there. There are excellent moments, especially Butterfly’s entry with her entourage, all on board boats, or the end of Act II, with the silhouette of the hull of Pinkerton’s warship and a small boat going towards it, while we listen to “il Coro a bocca chiusa”. There are almost too many scene changes, with sliding curtains that open new sets at the back of the stage (e.g. the Yamadori scene, the Commissioner, or an absurd Zio Bonzo hanging from the ceiling in a dragon’s mouth). The sets are attractive, but the costumes are not truly appealing to my mind.

What is outstanding in this production is the wonderful lighting by Tomasz Mierzwa, some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. (Apparently, he is not responsible for lighting the Mariinski production). But Trelinski’s stage direction is not that interesting, since the drama is lost in aestheticism and none of the characters is particularly well defined. In summary, this is a brilliant production, but rather short of emotion – something less than ideal for Puccini.
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From Seen and Heard International
By:James L. Zychowicz; Pictures © Dan Rest

The Kabanov Household

Leoš Janá?ek’s 1921 opera Katya Kabanova is based on the 1860 play The Storm by Alexander Ostrovsky, and the title of the source is a key element in its musical adaptation. Just as the storm is critical to Ostrovsky’s play, the tempest depicted at the beginning of the opera’s third act is one of the composer’s most powerful musical conceptions, and its presentation at Lyric Opera of Chicago is impressive for the way in which it brings together the various elements of this work. The drama, music, dialogue, and imagery must fuse well to make this scene intelligible, and the focus Markus Stenz gave this climactic scene conveyed the intensity of one of the composer’s most powerful stage works.

Karita Mattila seems perfectly suited to the role of Katya, a figure which she portrays as able to stand up to the verbal and emotional assaults of her domineering mother-in-law, Kabanicha, here portrayed by Judith Forst. As Katya, Mattila gave life to her character by expressing not only the powerful emotional outbursts that are essential to the first scene, but also the profound despair of the final part of the drama. Musically, Mattila gave an almost flawless performance, which required both a soaring upper register (for example, in the exchange with Varvara about the freedom of birds), as well as a clearly articulated lower register, most memorable in the storm scene. The latter passage, the almost unexpected confession, worked well in the speech rhythms which are at the core of vocal line in Janá?ek operas and Mattila allows her voice to suggest a kind of delirium, which leads her to blurt the name of her lover, and then the madness that possesses her in the final scene.

Mattila dominates the stage in the second half of the opera, a woman liberated from the oppressive household through her doomed quest for freedom in taking a lover. Already berated by the staid and demanding Kabanicha for deviating from convention, Varvara gives her the opportunity to react to her inner daimon without regard for the harm she should wreak upon Tichon and ultimately on his relationship with his mother. Mattila made Katya believable, not only vocally, but also through her acting. Her final moments remind one of expressionist drama, especially when Katya hears the Volga in the off-stage chorus, which emerges from the orchestra timbres just loudly enough. To this Katya responds almost dementedly, and at that point it is clear from Mattila’s interpretation of the role that Katya can neverreturn to conventional life in Kabanicha’s household.
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L to R Robyn Rocklein as Elizabeth Proctor, Jennifer Beauregard as Abigale Williams and Seth Kershisnik as John Proctor in The Crucible. ©

The Opera Theater took a big risk this year as part of its series of presenting contemporary operas in English. After four years of successful modern productions – including a 2008 heartfelt rendition of Benjamin Britten’s Rape of Lucretia - Stage Director Charles Roe and Musical Director Thomas Cockrell decided they finally had the vocal and orchestral talent to give a good account of Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible, based on playwright Arthur Miller’s searing drama.

“It’s an opera I always wanted to do since I was a senior at Baldwin-Wallace College in Cleveland, Ohio,” Roe said at a rehearsal about three weeks before the November performances at Crowder Hall at the University. “Melvin Hakola, my voice teacher at the time, sang the lead role of John Proctor, and I was very impressed with the drama and music and hoped some day to participate in a production. Obviously, I finally got my wish.”

Now that Roe and Cockrell are firmly partnered in their quest to present exciting operas in English, specifically from the second half of the 20th Century, the duo was ready and able to tackle Ward’s opera. The result was a gripping dramatic and vocal production based on the theme of the 1672 Salem Witch Trials, still recognized today as a metaphor for the McCarthy HUAC hearings that so divided our nation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The opera was an immediate success at its premiere at New York City Opera in 1961 (it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music) and had the added benefit of a Bernard Stambler’s libretto which he skillfully adapted from Miller’s play.

But the obstacles Roe and Cockrell faced in doing justice to The Crucible were in the details. The opera, which has 16 singing parts and 39 orchestra members, is the largest performing group the duo has had to work with since their first collaboration of Mark Adamo’s Little Women. Ward’s music is heavily orchestrated, quick moving and demands a range of vocal expressions from the singers. Right from the start of Act One, the cast has to delineate a text filled with declamation that quickly moved into a parlando style interspersed with lyrical phrasing – which it must project over orchestration – that moves faster than a speeding bullet.
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From Seen and Heard International
By: José M Irurzun; Picture © Teatro Maestranza de Sevilla

Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla. Coro de la Asociación de Amigos del Teatro de la Maestranza, Conductor: Marco Guidarini. Teatro Maestranza de Sevilla. 18.11.2009. (JMI)

Natalie Manfrino (Roxanne) and Roberto Alagna (Cyrano) ©

After the performances of Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac in Valencia some three years ago, this opera returns to another Spanish stage. First time round, the title role was sung by Placido Domingo and now the focus turns to Roberto Alagna. I have to say that on each occasion the outcome was a huge success with interpretations from both great stars which were magnificent.

The Seville production comes from Montpellier, where it was premiered in 2003 and was subsequently revived in 2006. I saw it there in March 2006, when it was turned out to be a most unfortunate evening, since Roberto Alagna withdrew during the first scene and was replaced by an immature cover. The Montpellier production was credited with stage direction and sets by both David and Federico Alagna, while now David’s name appears in the programme. The production is thoroughly traditional with the action taking place as written, i.e. in the 17th century and is still most effective, although the direction of the singer/actors is not particularly good, particularly in the crowd scenes. There are suitable period costumes and very decent lighting which at Montpellier was responsibility of Aldo Solbiati; here it was Laurent Fleutot’s. In general, the production worked rather better in Seville, probably due to very difficult circumstances in Montpellier surrounding at the 2006 revival. A DVD of the Montpellier premiere is also available for comparative purposes.
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While watching the Turandot HD Telecast on November, 7th, it became apparent that the performance in the house was definitely superior to the one shown in selected movie theaters around the world, or to be specific at the El Con in Tucson, AZ. Just a few minutes into Act One, the audience realized the weather patterns were not going to cooperate with the Satellite in the sky.

The glitches started in Act One when the sound would go off for a second or two accompanied by some visual dropouts, causing the thrust of Puccini’s great music to develop a case of the jitters. In Act Two, after Turandot’s In Questa Regia aria, the first five or six measures of Straniero, Ascolta! went silent, lessening the intensity which soprano Maria Guleghina had so effectively established for her ice princess up to that point. Shorter silence spans along with some horizontal white lines darting across the screen plagued the rest of the telecast.

Critics of Franco Zeffirelli’s opulent production have called it everything from breathtaking to gaudy, depending on their tolerance for the director’s theatrical display. On the other hand, audiences have had nothing but praise for Zeffirelli’s detailed production of Carlo Gozzi’s 1762 fairy tale. And from the smiling faces at the Saturday matinee, their approval will continue as long as the Met wants to keep the director’s money-making 1983 production.

The theater was packed, and it remained so until the opera ended. Luckily, the performance had enough going for it to compensate for the technological blips.

Both Guleghina and tenor Marcello Giordani as Calaf, the unknown prince, are new to their roles this year, with varying results. The soprano, from her first entrance in Act Two for what is described in the libretto as the ‘Riddle’ scene, showed she had a clear vision of the role. Her comportment and gestures were in tune with the music, so she was able to make the called-for transition from the iron-willed princess who was determined not to give in to Calaf’s advances, to finally accepting his love in Act Three. Guleghina’s middle voice was secure and warm, and, for the most part, she hit the many high B’s and C’s that Puccini demanded from his Turandot. During an intermission interview, Guleghina stated the role is hell to sing – an apt description with which many sopranos would agree. The role fits the soprano’s present vocal state, and one she will keep in her repertoire.
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