Easter parade?
La Cieca hears that Opera Orchestra of New York’s 2010-2011 season will represent a step up from last two years of stopgap recitals as well as a step back from the three-opera seasons of yore.
The program, it is said, will consist of a double bill of Cavalleria rusticana and La Navarraise in the fall (Muti-maned Alberto Veronesi on the podium) and L’africaine with Eve Queler waving the stick in the spring. The cher public are invited to start guessing about casting; La Cieca will jump in with a suggestion of Aprile Millo for Santuzza.
Speaking of Mme Millo has anyone seen THIS!
From La Millo:
I am so thrilled to announce the formation of my new company. Operavision, INC.
The marble is handed me, I must find the David locked inside…. it will produce projects with a sure bent towards loving opera for all it uniquely is.
No apologies. I love opera, and I want to share that love with a lot of people who feel like me.
Stay tuned.
http://aprilemillo.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/operavision-inc/
translation??
Sorry – OT but must share….
Vignette:
We are entertaining a very wealthy Manhattan socialite to dinner during a performance of Nozze at Covent Garden. She is in her early seventies, very elegant and bejewelled. She is a subscriber at the Met and loves opera. On arrival, she says “I have never heard of any of the singers performing tonight” (http://www.roh.org.uk/packages/casting.aspx?perfId=11302). I suggest she might know Schrott? He is married to Netrebko. Ah, yes, she has heard of Netrebko. I then tell her she must know Kwiecien if she is a Met supporter. Yes, she has heard him recently – was it in Alcina? I tell her it is unlikely since there are 6 tenors and 2 basses in Alcina. I suggest she may have seen him in Carmen. This she finds impossible since “it was this big star – Kaufmann”. I explain that Kwiecien would have sung Escamillo as he is baritone and not a tenor. She is unconvinced.
At the interval, I tell her about Da Ponte’s extraordinary life, that he brought opera to the States and indeed is buried in Queens. She says “Do you mean Mozart had several lyricists?”
No further comments….
Is this a photograph of the dinner party?
You were there too?
You are wicked Manou! I might mention that La Cieca probably went to great lengths to get that tiara out of the hock shop especially, just for that night,too!
Yeah, thanks for the party, manou. I’ll return your silverware when I’m done with it.
La Dumont looks as though she could have a singer’s face. Look at the width of those cheekbones. She looks a wee bit like La Bumberina there!
Armida, Armida, Armida…Damn sorceresses!
not surprised….those ppl do it for the “status”. And thank god for them! If opera isn’t continued to be perceived as a status symbol and patronized by rich dilettantes then there wouldn’t be any opera for the rest of us!
I just checked the OONY website, and interestingly, it hasn’t been updated in a while. It still has last season up. Worse, a link to hear L’animo ho stanca by Marcello Giordani takes you to a video of Brian Hymel singing O Paradis. Even the caption under the video is incorrect.
guesses based on OONY history. Giordani had been loyal to the company and will probably be in the Cav with Millo who in addition to having been loyal to Queler really doesn’t have anything else on her books. The alagna Koch team sounds good to me.
Yes, isoldit, I think you’re absolutely right about the team of Millo and Giordani…. I believe MG is Millo’s tenor of choice and OONY really should be replacing Medea for Millo….so it all falls neatly into place…
Besides, I think she’d be great Santuzza, don’t you?
Lindoro:
This comment is in reply to your second post on Millo (the reply button is missing).
I appreciate your POV. I think it’s great when a singer goes to a great singer who was a mistress or master of technique for guidance. I think Pavarotti would have been a fool if he had not availed himself of Sutherland’s assistance. I know singers as diverse as Vaness, Fleming and Van Dam sought out Price for assistance.
But in those cases, the singers received the coaching while maintaining their own unique “voice” as it were. That for me is the issue with Millo. All of her accents and musical gestures (and technical failings) seem to come from one of her idols and ultimately I don’t hear her own “voice” clearly enough.
Maybe it’s just me.
I understand your point, I suffer from the same issue when i listen to a couple of artists, one of whom will remain nameless so i do not get a call in the middle of the day to bitch me out (I LOVE you!)
What i am telling you is that those same things are present in pretty much every performance by a non-American singer of the period and pretty much is still the norm. This is so because here in the USA we no longer see these things as acceptable. We pretend to be “original” and “new” and “improved” when in reality we are reinventing the wheel because we refuse to allow influences on our art.
The funny part is that nowadays USA-based singers tend to sound all the same: Bland, unsteady, unformed, unfinished because we think that being “unique” means not searching for other people’s advise and doing it all on our own.
I had classmates who openly and proudly stated that they didn’t listen to singers when they were learning rep and they were surprised when they were told their interpretations were boring and had a faceless quality to them. Still to this day it is a matter of pride for young singers not to listen to older singers sing the rep they are studying; then they spend thousands on coaches…
Gotcha. I completely agree.
Babs probably made the most salient point in her comment on Broadway: Grand opera is not a living art form any more (not really – Opera used to be like movies today – not anymore) that means that singers have to be able to assimilate the traditions of the past (because that’s really all we have!) without being swallowed by them.
Easy for me to criticize. I am just a lawyer.
I can use a lawyer very soon.
Babs:
I cannot respond to your post directly because the magic button disappeared (and not in a pornographic way either).
Your post is awesome. Chock full of discussion points:
In no particular order:
I completely agree that neither Milanov nor Tebaldi were verismo singers. Milanov, of course, came from an entirely different tradition. She was the Arangi-Lombardi of her day, if you catch my drift. Tebaldi was trained in (tainted by) by certain aspects of the verismo-centric singing style, but her sound, her instincts and her rep were more classical in nature (they had to be if she wanted an international career in the 50s).
I would say, however, that Milanov and Tebaldi may have fallen into certain bad habits because the expectations of their audiences were so heavily influenced by verismo during that era. Callas started clearing that away in the mid-50s (though she suffered from some of those same taints and expectations) I also agree that Callas translated certain aspects of V. style into bel canto. I do not agree that her efforts along those lines were a good thing.
Not until Sutherland and Price do you have great sopranos (singing Italian roles) mostly free of verismo-centric influences – and their techniques were based on the oldest traditions. (Marchesi would have embraced them.) And boy did they both get criticised for their indifferent diction and declamatory skills. Despite the fact that they were in truth harking back to vocal verities far older than verismo.
For me, Olivero was a great (if idiosyncratic) technician who sang verismo, understood it, and knew precisely how to avoid it’s awful traps – chest voice taken to high, hard-driven upper register, lack of facility in accessing the head voice. (None of which have anything to do with the operas that were written in the Verismo tradition, of course. Just what sopranos did to themselves to make maximum effect in those roles.)
Olivero took what was truly valuable in the verismo tradition while declining to sacrifice her voice on its altar.
I have nothing to add to your comments about Millo. They strike me as spot-on. I might also add that we all know that the 80s were a time of transition in opera. So many careers that blossomed during that era seem to have been cursed or flawed. Tastes were changing. Marketing went from a necessary evil to THE ENTIRE POINT OF EVERYTHING. Millo seems to have gotten caught in the mess, and there was apparently no one to guide her out of it. That really stinks too because when I heard her first recital disc on EMI, I nearly had a stroke. I was only about 18, but I was smart enough to know a real find when I heard it. And then it all went wrong somehow.
But in truth maybe Millo is happier now than when she was trying to conquer the universe.
And Di Donato for all her terrifying cheerfulness is stating a timeless truth – most great artists (and all great performing artists) must understand and assimilate the rules of their craft, the teachings of relevant tradition, the nuts and bolts of proper technique so that they are FREE transcend that foundation to find their own unique voice and style.
Mwahaha…he said “fucking men”. Which brings me back to Penetrating Wagner’s Ring.
I knew someone would latch onto that one.
Hi all,
just stumbled across this blog – am a newbie. Am hoping indeed that Millo will be casted at OONY. Some of the very best memories from the MET I personally have had over last 20 years were standing in family circle in my college days and hearing the gorgeous gleaming sound of Millo float over the orchestra and over the house as Liu and Amelia in Ballo. Diction, phrasing, rhythym – all captivating. Didn’t see it in person but in the broadcast of Aida she was spectacular. I can’t think of anyone I’ve heard on todays stages at MET who sings this repertory as she does!
By the way, just noticed that the Met Futures page was updated again today. Roberto Devereux with SR has been removed
BUTT…..
“Die Fledermaus has been added to the repertory, and will see a new production, with new dialogue by playwright David Hirson.”
yay!!!!
Regarding the OONY casting: I am excited to hear L’AFRICAINE live. I think Selike is a role that should be cast with a singer of color if possible (though just what the character’s ethnicity might be is oddly ambiguous in the libretto…). I would suggest Measha Brueggergosman if she’s in good enough health these days (she sings beautifully in French) or Angela Brown.
It’s a two-soprano opera. For Inez, perhaps Maya Kovalevska. Or could we hope for a NY debut for Carmen Giannattasio or Carmela Remigio? For a French speaker, does anyone remember the Canadian Guylaine Girard who sang Liu at NYCO a few years ago? She was lovely.
The tenor role (Vasco de Gama) is very difficult to cast.
I don’t know the opera, but I can’t stand Angela Brown. I’ve only heard samples of Measha. I vote for Makesha Kizart, whose making her Met debut as Liu in the next couple of seasons. She’s in the Marie Victoire I got last week, and she’s truly stellar.
From Wikipedia on L’Africaine
Performance history
The opera was premiered at the Paris Opéra on April 28, 1865 in a performing edition undertaken by François-Joseph Fétis, as the composer had not prepared a final version at his death the previous year. It is Fétis who gave the work its present title; Meyerbeer had referred to it as ‘Vasco da Gama’. In fact it is clear from the text, with its references to Hinduism, that the heroine Sélika hails not from Africa, but from a region of, or island nearby, India – Madagascar has been suggested as a compromise reconciliation. Gabriela Cruz has published a detailed analysis of the historical context of the events of the opera and the opera setting itself.[1]
Sorry, Sanford, can you remind us of the Marie Victoire details? A CD?
A live performance (only the second in the opera’s history…it was written in 1913 but didn’t make it to the stage until 2004). It from the Deutche Opera Berlin from 2009. I need to edit the applause and German announcer out, and plan on doing that tonight, so I can send it to anyone who wants it.
Also, I recorded Martinu’s The Plays Of Mary this week, and it’s stunning and otherworldly, and I can also send that.
Email me at sschimel@hotmail.com
Takesha Kizart is an interesting idea. She’s singing Donizetti’s MARIA DI ROHAN for Bel Canto at Caramoor next month.
Starbucks to offer free Wifi as of July 1st! Yay!
about time they joined the 21st century.
Takesha, not Makesha