Kam der neue Gott gegangen
La Cieca hears that Lance Ryan, scheduled to make his Met debut tonight in Ariadne auf Naxos, is indisposed. Subbing as Bacchus is Michael Hendrick.
Cher Public
- grimoaldo: Has anybody posted the classical Grammy winners?Engineer...
- almavivante: When I read an inspired extravaganza like DharmaBay's, I rea...
- OpinionatedNeophyte: Is this the same Laquita Mitchell? Is she ready for prime ti...
- Betsy_Ann_Bobolink: An interesting sidebar is that to be historically "accurate"...
- grimoaldo: Yeah, I missed both of those too. Very good, very funny, con...
- CruzSF: Congrats to DharmaBay and iltenoredigrazia. I don't know HOW...
- OpinionatedNeophyte: *sigh* The far more interesting "racial edge" to the story i...
- grimoaldo: There was an amazing production of Showboat by Ian Judge don...
- OpinionatedNeophyte: Oh yes Monty, didn't you know? Its in the Opera-L bylaws tha...
- grimoaldo: Searing finale of Luisa Miller with Taro Ichihara Eduard Tum...
colleagues
- A Liberal's Libretto
- AndrewAndJoshua
- Barihunks
- Cafeteria Rusticana
- Capital New York
- Civic Center
- Counter Critic
- Daniel Stephen Johnson
- Family Circle
- Handelmania
- Hugo Alvarez Domínguez
- Il Corriere della Grisi
- Intermezzo
- ionarts
- Iron Tongue of Midnight
- Judycast
- Jumping Clapping Man
- Likely Impossibilites
- Mass Culture Mozart
- Met Futures
- My Favorite Intermissions
- New York Post
- Opera Arts
- Opera Bouffe
- Opera Cake
- Opera Fresh
- Opera Music Broadcast
- Opera Rocks
- Opera Tales
- Operacast
- Operavision
- Out West Arts
- pArts
- Poison Ivy's Wall of Text
- Sandow
- SFCV
- Sieglinde’s Diaries
- Superconductor
- The Classical Beat
- The Classical Review
- The Opera Tattler
- Una butaca en el paraiso
- Vilane fille
- Wenarto
- Willy or Won’t He?
- Wo bleibt Elektra?
- WQX-Aria
- Yankeediva
- Zachary Woolfe
blog advertising is good for you
59 comments
Today's Events
Upcoming Events
Upcoming Chats
- Feb. 15, 7:30 PM ET: Il Barbiere di Siviglia
- Feb. 18, 1:00 PM ET: Khovanshchina
- Feb. 22, 7:30 PM ET: Madama Butterfly
- Feb. 25, 1:00 PM ET: Ernani
- Feb. 27, 7:00 PM ET: Khovanshchina
La Casa della Cieca →
Topics
- anna anna anna
- barihunk
- bel canto
- blind item
- blog bloggity blog
- bobby baby
- broadcast
- camp
- cancellation
- chat
- cher public
- contest
- critic
- diva
- dvd
- filth
- gala
- gay gay gay gay gay
- happy birthday
- hd
- jj
- l'evasiva
- la cieca ci guarda
- la scoopenda
- maestro levine
- man of steel
- mp3
- need you ask?
- new york post
- new york times
- nyco
- our own
- peter gelb is...
- regie
- review
- sad
- the met
- unnatural acts of opera
- wagner
- youtube
Yet another indisposed debutant! Seems to be one a week.
Good to know Fiend and Billingsgate are earning their checks…
Pity about the Commonwealth tenor. Can’t Rendall be flown in to continue the shining legacy of Remedios?
Sorry to hear that – I have seen Ryan as Siegfried both in Siegfried (Opera du Rhin, Strasbourg) and Gotterdammerung (Maggio Musicale – Fura Dels Baus production), and he was exceptional. Hope he gets better soon.
thanks for the endorsement of lance ryan. i’ve ordered the dvds of the “siegfried” and “gotterdammerung” from that la fura dels baus “ring” and i was looking forward to hearing ryan tonight. if he’s good, maybe he can come out to san francisco and save us from ian storey as siegfried in the 2011 “ring.”
anybody else who’s heard ryan want to chip in?
Beware the wrath of the Vicar……I have never heard Storey so can’t comment. He had mixed reviews for his Tristan in the ill fated La Scala Tristan with Barenboim.
Treleavan’s the man you want– best since Dowd and Mitchinson!
I heard Ryan as Erik in Fliegende Hollander in Stuttgart a couple of years ago. Clear, bright heldentenor quality – excellent control of dynamics. A bit of a “sob” effect at one point, but it passed quickly. An excellent, almost fierce actor (it was a Bieito production, so Erik was less of a milquetoast than usual).
Lance Ryan was excellent as the Siegfried-Siegfried in the Valencia but much less convincing in Götterdämmerung – he sounded exhausted, tight-voiced an nasal as if he had given everything he had three nights earlier and had little left to give. He’s a useful tenor – like Ian Storey, who learned Tristan in three months when Burkhard Fritz pulled out of the Scala production – but not the second coming. Of course, neither are a match for the unforgettable Alberto Remedios!
Yes, at the Firenze Gotterdammerung he managed to sing whilst suspended upside down in gravity boots (act II) and then sound fresh and thrilling for act III.
Mr. Hendrick is sure not to disappoint. Very fine singing here.
http://www.michaelhendrick.com/Michael_Hendrick/Audio/Entries/2005/10/22_Strauss%3A_Ariadne_auf_Naxos-_Act_Two%3A_Du%2C_alles_du!_(MPEG_audio_file%2C_7.7_MB).html
Perfect headline!
I saw Hendrick in Das Wunder der Heliane (concert) in London a couple of years ago. Poor chap couldn’t make much of an impression in that overblown, turgid piece (and I speak as someone who loves the very best bits of Die tote Stadt … well the two good bits.).
I was there too (trying hard to stay awake). Racette was also very disappointing as I recall (maybe I was having a nightmare).
“Dyke, ya know…”
Racette was a non-event as Heliane. They obviously couldn’t get either Brewer or Voigt that night — both have the right kind of voice for the role — so they just got another American soprano. And how about Andreas Schmidt’s attempt at a performance? Sad.
Oh God – I’d forgotten that Monty! I left at the intermission. That was a good advert no-one, especially Korngold. Poor Pat Racette made her London opera debut in that I think. The tenor was woefully bad, but at least Bacchus is a short part and can be sung by a lyric with stamina and firm high notes.
does anyone know how old is lise lindstrom? her webpage doesn’t say.
I think she’s around 35.
Considering that she was not a teen when dating a friend of mine in 1991, she’s probably closer to 40. Lise, to her great credit, paid a lot of dues before getting the kind of break most only dream of.
I heard Lance Ryan as Siegfried in the Vlaamse Opera’s Ring. Quite impressive for much of the time, though not what I would call subtle…. and as we have gone off track on to Das Wunder der Heliane, I too was at the London performance and had no difficulty in staying awake. It would benefit from pruning, but I love lots of it – Michael Hendrick, like the rest of the cast, was hampered by the stupid decision to site them behind the orchestra, which was 130 strong.
A subtle Siegfried is an oxymoron (and an alliteration).
Yes indeed, it was very silly to plonk the soloists behind the orchestra – I was also very high up and found some of them hard to hear.
And a subtle Bacchus is not alliterative, but it is surely an oxymoron.
Bashful Bacchus?
People falling asleep…….jeepers! Over the last few hours I have listened to a complete Lucia di Lammermoor, quickly followed with Debussy’s Pelleas & Melisande. Where is people’s attention span these days? Probably having being wasted, waiting for over long intervals at some live performances to conclude.Then going back in, to rage about the type of mounted production they are seeing. Wasting a full fuckin’ night hearing to just one opera?? Which, in most cases goes infinitely -’into the wind’ for all time in any case, the moment it finishes.
Prune Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane ..as the singers and orchestra search for ‘that unattainable lost chord’?…..never! Shit it is a overwhelming sonic blockbuster to the ears.
Imaagine the MET with a 3800 seat capcity trying to mount the ‘impossible’. Thank God for recordings.
speaking of dramatic tenors, what you think of this guy?
i see he did not sing much at the met.
Gegan Grigorian!!!
Immense voice!!!
The first sight of Grigorian prompted hilarity in America. But his singing was thrilling in an old fashioned way — very loud, utterly secure, heart on sleeve and tending toward crudeness but not unbearably so. Though the best Gherman I ever saw was youngish Atlantov, mid-70′s Bolshoi in NY, amazing Del Monaco like, Grigorian was not to be dismissed even in comparison, though when he lay on his back, dead, the immense stomach prompted more laughter. He made quite an effect as Dimitri too. I saw him do the ur-Forza at Kirov. He had his troubles including a slow learning curve, but poured out a fair degree of thrilling sound and meant what he sang.
However he had earlier on quite failed to make headway as a singer and had become a butcher instead. Gergiev had rescued him but he still had the provincial crudity he probably began with, and also sported the belly and bottom of an older man. Had he been able to get more routine and work with some good, demanding people earlier he might have been consistently wonderful — he had a much greater endowment than Domingo. I do think the Met made an effort with him. I was told he was asked to lose weight, tried, had a hard time and they more or less parted company but don’t know all the facts.
Yuri Marusin was an interesting tenor that did the rounds with Gergiev, and can be found as Gherman on the Glyndebourne Graham Vick Queen of Spades – a really peculiar voice, produced all over the place, with a whitish tone that had intonantion issues – one wasn’t sure if it was half-crooned or not, but pinged fabulously at the top – and he was absolutely possessed as Gherman, truly terrifying in the latter stages of that opera.
Great voice – pity he looks like the love child of Orson Welles and Ernest Borgnine (also like Mario Lanza on an overdose of cortisone).
Hahaha @ love child of Welles and Borgnine
In an opera house, my seat would not be 5 feet away from him. The size of his voice, the size of him…would fill the house, thrill the audience and get the job done in fine style. HD will be the murder of opera, except for the light ones that the pretty, young, skinny sexy singers can handle…which includes none of the ones I want to hear. Obviously the audience there didn’t mind his looks.
You are of course correct – sadly the disbelief is getting harder and harder to suspend now that we have become used to close-ups and expect a modicum of veracity onstage .
I have seen Alfredo Kraus in his sixties (or seventies?) as Nemorino, I have seen Pav in Tosca where he had to die by sliding slowly and precariously down a wall, I have seen consumptive Violettas who seemed to bear the illness very well indeed, and lots of Juliettes who looked a tad older than 13, and of course one always has to see a Turandot who has to inspire violent love on sight – sometime not very easy to believe.
Audiences nowadays are more demanding as Peter Gelb seems to know very well. Sad, but true.
Shouldn’t he have been cast as Jabber in Star Wars who Princess Leia strangles.
Was he the same tenor that Gregiev used, in that video of La Forza from the Kirov? All I can vividly remember was, that the tenor and the baritone were yelling and way off key at times.
Kim’s coloratura was amazing. I thought I was listening to an old recording of Lily Pons. Did Hendrick use a little falseto? Rather strange for a Wagnerian tenor. Maybe he had a bad voice day.
He was announced as ill after the intermission and seemed to be clearly struggling.
I have to say, if you want to boo a new production, fine. I think it is often misguided, but ok. If you want to boo a conductor, whatever floats your boat. But usually I think that if you want to boo a singer, that’s just bad taste. If you want to boo the cover, who was announced as ill, on the night of his Met debut, as some jackass up in the Family Circle decided to tonight, then you are among the dregs of humanity.
Sorry…but I was in the house tonight..and the booing came from the Orchestra/Grand Tier level. It was NOT Family Circle. The poor guy was struggling and certainly did not deserve the booing he received. Nina Stemme was RADIANT for the whole performance.
I don’t think that’s right. I was sitting in the front third of the circle and it sure sounded like it was coming from behind me. Could be it came from both?
For the record, it was not Hendrick’s Met debut- it was to have been Ryan’s.
There was nothing amzaing about it. She was pretty adequate, which means to say that she should not have been asked to do her first Zerbinetta on the Met stage. She is a nice young talent and likeable but her top is not under complete control and she is not the mistress of the stage Zerbinetta needs to be. The pauses were sometimes unmsical. If you thought that– or what Pons provided- was great coloratura, NO WONDER you think Netrebko is so terrific.
Kim was only ok. Not much point or intent in her performance or singing. Back to the birdy type in the role. Another cutesy stage presence like Damrau. I like a more womanly Zerbinetta.
Zerbinetta…..She should have had both her ‘birdy’ and the ‘womanly’ aspects of her character, on display by the end of the Opera.
A little calmer….a little wiser, about life.
Too often it is cast as just a ‘show-off’ role.
Baphomet, in the illustration, looks like the demon sheep in Carly Fiorina’s web campaign ad.