parterre box

25 comments

• 1
  Bitchy Testiculi says:

  January 28, 2009 at 9:52 AM

  If only all opera of 17th century opera can be this exciting and the staging so creatively realised! (PS: I’ve given other Cavalli, and the earlier Monteverdi a bash and it is just to dreary for words – “Poppea” is one of the exceptions IMO.)

  I would buy this if it were to come out.
• 2
  Violetta D. Pensataci says:

  January 28, 2009 at 10:29 AM

  Normally I’m not a big fan of Regie, but the giant dancing Kewpie doll won me over.
• 3
  balabanov11 says:

  January 28, 2009 at 10:50 AM

  okay, this look totally fab to me – it seems like updates and pop culture references have actual application to the piece – I’d like to see it.
• 4
  Straussmonster says:

  January 28, 2009 at 10:53 AM

  With pieces like this that really did have a subtext that’s going to be utterly lost in performance if you do it straight (no one wants to read detailed program notes in order to even begin to understand a staging), updating like this is smart, and looks like a lot of fun.
• 5
  Sanford says:

  January 28, 2009 at 11:18 AM

  It looks gorgeous, but I wonder how much time the designers spent in Amsterdam’s coffee shops prior to designing this. Ah, Amsterdam…. I had a great time there from what I can remember through the haze of smoke
• 6
  Cassandra says:

  January 28, 2009 at 12:07 PM

  I always get David and Chris confused.
• 7
  La Cieca says:

  January 28, 2009 at 12:44 PM

  Cassandra: To be fair, dear, you confuse a lot of people.
• 8
  jatm2063 says:

  January 28, 2009 at 12:54 PM

  Okay, I usually am bored by any baroque opera, but this does indeed look like fun. I wonder if NYCO could import this.
• 9
  High C's @ 4:20 says:

  January 28, 2009 at 1:28 PM

  LUCA!
• 10
  harry says:

  January 28, 2009 at 1:34 PM

  Perhaps I am a philistine. I remember when I was younger and doing a large deal on a stack of new records I was buying cheap. I exclaimed to the dealer “Well if you chuck in the Cavalli turkey, its a deal” He did. I must investigate and listen to it to see if it really was. It is still on the shelves …..un-played!
• 11
  Browser says:

  January 28, 2009 at 2:05 PM

  Saw this in Amsterdam a week or so ago and it is very good indeed. Not tremendously interesting musically, but a really very clever (and I should imagine very expensive) production. Apparently Intendants from around the world have been invited to see it, so it is not without the bounds of reason that it will end up in several other major houses before the end of its life…
• 12
  Miss Kitty Litter says:

  January 28, 2009 at 2:34 PM

  As a long time monstrous fan of the composer (and big rubber dicks), it saddened me awfully to watch this.

  Cavalli speaks for himself quite eloquently without the need to tart him up by some misquided director whose ego must at least be as Ercole was ‘long’.
• 13
  Hans Lick says:

  January 28, 2009 at 2:41 PM

  It LOOKS like they’ve simply staged Hercules’s 12 labors, which involve (among other things) carrying the heavens on his shoulders for Atlas, wearing women’s clothes and spinning thread for Omphale, slaying lions, stags, boars, baby seals (no, oops, that’s something else), cleaning the Augean Stables, et al. I’m sure that’s how Louis took it, and what the Padre intended. It can’t be anything naughty – the composer was a priest, you know. (Like da Ponte.)

  Yes, I’d love to see it. Bitchy, if you didn’t like Ritorno di Ulisse, you have no ears or testiculi. Okay, maybe it was a bad production.

  Louis’s wife was a dimwit. The girls at the French court asked her if she’d ever been in love before she came to France (and at once fell in love with Louis). She was astonished at the question. “There were no kings in Spain except my father!” she cried. The idea that one could fall in love out of one’s class (and hers was Habsburg) never crossed her mind or her heart. Louis’s affairs were a great trial to her. (It was also she, not Marie Antoinette, who wondered why the poor did not eat cake when they ran out of bread.)
• 14
  Vanderdecken says:

  January 28, 2009 at 3:14 PM

  It is indeed tremendous fun… I saw the production and I liked it a lot. However, Miss Kitty Litter’s objections are completely understandable: at times all the visual effects were a bit too much and some of the more serious aspects of the story were obscured by all the comic effects. I’m sure Miss Litter means to say that Cavalli doesn’t need all this extra ‘help’ from the director and he probably doesn’t. The production has enormous entertainment value, but I would love to see the work again on a somewhat smaller scale.
  The basic idea – having Louis XIV change into Hercules – was fine: it gave the Prologue a place in the story as a whole. Luca Pisaroni as Louis XIV/Ercole kept the production together. I was impressed by Anna Bonitatibus as a very graceful and dramatically convincing Giunone.
• 15
  wotan_in_inman says:

  January 28, 2009 at 3:38 PM

  If you are juxtaposing Cavalli and Monteverdi, then I feel you give credence to this production, which delights me, incidentally. Cavalli is Bernstein to Monteverdi’s Copland.
• 16
  Regina delle fate says:

  January 28, 2009 at 7:42 PM

  I so wish I had gone to see it and I hope it will be taken up by other companies. Alden’s Calisto from Munich at Covent Garden has been the highlight of the season so far – stunning to look at and way over the top, but so is Cavalli. I think Alden’s penchant for a certain kind of visual camp and kitsch suits Cavalli better than it does Monteverdi. Those clips really make me envious of those who saw it. I hope they are already planning the revival.
• 17
  Leonardo d'Olandia says:

  January 28, 2009 at 8:32 PM

  It WAS a very nice production! I´ve seen it three times and never get bored, which is very remarkable, cinse I´m not an (pre)barok opera fan. This will be released on DVD next year. Cast was good (Luca indeed) and Concerto Köln was directed by Ivor Bolton.

  Actually, I thought this production would end up in the Regie quizz….

  Cheers!
  Leonardo from Holland
• 18
  Hippolyte says:

  January 28, 2009 at 9:45 PM

  I attended the premiere in Munich of Alden’s production of Cavalli’s La Calisto (which was remounted this past fall at Covent Garden). It was extraordinarily detailed, “entertaining”, looked like a million dollars (which it probably cost or more), and for me had little or nothing to do with Cavalli and most everything to do with displaying Alden’s ingenuity. As annoying as that production was, at least it wasn’t as actively destructive as his twin Christopher’s production of Handel’s Arianna in Creta done by the Gotham Chamber Opera a few years ago.
• 19
  Cassandra says:

  January 29, 2009 at 2:18 AM

  “Cassandra: To be fair, dear, you confuse a lot of people.”

  Oh, I’m quite sure I do.
• 20
  Bitchy Testiculi says:

  January 29, 2009 at 5:25 AM

  13. Hans Lick

  ‘Yes, I’d love to see it. Bitchy, if you didn’t like Ritorno di Ulisse, you have no ears or testiculi. Okay, maybe it was a bad production.’

  Well, Hans dear, I was up for a ‘Ritorno’ – and even got to the point of learning the music for this production. Even though I just LOVE singing recit, I thank Cruise this project got 86′d.

  Having sung a fair amount of Monteverdi and love listening to the madrigals etc. and also having invested a lot of money and money on cds etc of that time (’Giasone’, ‘Serse’, Rossi’s ‘Orfeo’ and Landi’s ‘Sant’ Alessio’ etc) to give it a fair chance … I still find that style of music INCREDIBLY boring. Loads of recit with mostly VERY short arias. Although production like this ‘Ercole’ would make me stay for the whole show – and I’d probably go back for a second or third viewing.

  ‘Poppeae’ is in a class of its own. And regardless who composed what, it is a masterpiece by any time’s standard.

  Back to ‘Ritorno’, for what it is worth, my opinion is shared by colleagues of mine who are critically acclaimed for their Monteverdi. Go figure.

  Well, if 17th century 10 minute recits gets your juices flowing, good for you. Each to his own I say.
• 21
  Miss Kitty Litter says:

  January 29, 2009 at 12:14 PM

  “I’m sure Miss Litter means to say that Cavalli doesn’t need all this extra ‘help’ from the director and he probably doesn’t.” – Vanderdecken

  Why, yes, VdD that’s exactly what she meant. Sadly, though, these days MKL thinks and types through an ominpresent haze of Stoli and Purina ProPlan.
• 22
  Gaia Fioraia says:

  January 29, 2009 at 2:12 PM

  Ah, Luca Pistolone è un gran figone
• 23
  Browser says:

  January 30, 2009 at 6:51 AM

  And Anna Maria Panzarella was FANTASTIC!
• 24
  Will says:

  January 30, 2009 at 11:42 AM

  I loved what I saw and Alden is very right when he says it has a kind of Elizabethan feel–17th century Venetian opera (even if it WAS written for Paris) combined comedy and tragedy, grand personages and baggy pants comics (descended from the commedia dell’arte) in the exact same way Shakespeare did. I don’t see this production as doing any violence to Cavalli at all. In fact, i think it is very much in line with the tone of productions in Cavalli’s time, just updated to our style.
• 25
  La Trajectina says:

  February 1, 2009 at 5:30 PM

  I’d been looking forward to this production for almost a full year, largely due to the line-up – which actually ended up slightly different from the one originally announced. Much as I adore Panzarella, I can’t help wondering what Gens would have made of Deianira. On the other hand, I was totally chuffed with Chiummo, both dramatically and vocally. Sorry to say Cangemi didn’t make much of an impression; didn’t realise it was her until someone mentioned her during intermission. Loved Bonitatibus going all pianissimo for the second half of “In amor cio ch’altri fura.” Title role tessitura’s a tad low for Pisaroni, but hey – LUCA! Right, boy and girls?

  There’d been a degree of excitement beforehand at such a rarely performed piece being staged at all. Still, going in pretty much unprepared, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of visuals when I finally had the chance to go, last Wednesday – Amsterdam has tended to stick with the sparse and dignified (Bondy, Audi) in recent years. Suffice to say the creepy giant baby dolls, not to mention the sheer quantity of rubber and leather involved, came as a bit of a shock. Accordingly, I couldn’t recall much of the music after that first encounter, so I went again on Friday for the final performance. It had sold out before I got there, but I managed to wheedle someone out of their spare at half price. This is the Netherlands, after all, haggling’s a national sport.

  Glad to hear that a DVD release is in the works. I need to inflict this on unsuspecting friends.