Think ’til your brain madly whirls
La Cieca hears that Renée Fleming will yet again grace the stage of the Metropolitan with a new role in 2015. The production will be staged by Susan Stroman.
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Thank you for more Operetta! And when, in one of the largest Spanish speaking cities in the US, are we going to get some Zarzuela?
Zarzuela? what are you nuts, that oh so not Kool
Why not? Washington national Opera seems to be doing Ok and they have done several Zarzuelas. Zarsuelas are probably the ultimate part of the repertoire yet to be discovered by about 90% of the opera going public in the USA if only because theaters in the USA seem to be all OK with Sweeney Todd but not with Zarzuela.
And given the fact that singers like Domingo, Lorengar, Krauss, Carreras and many others have thought enough of the art form, I think it hardly deserves the snobbish remark.
In fact zarzuela is hard to do well, with all the spoken dialogue and stylistic flair.
I am not disputing that, but so is operetta and look at the many performances of Flederamaus and merry Widow that are done all around the globe.
So is Wagner, and look at how many productions of the ring are done, and most of them are not well sung and several of them are ugly and poorly conceived.
Zarzuela might not be easy to do well, but that does not mean it is unworthy of being taught and learned.
My dear Lindoro there was nothing snobbish about my remark, it was supposed to be a joke.
True, I was assuming a lot, namely that you would have followed the last few exchanges in the noch einmal thread (at 25.2 to be specific), please take a look for some background on my joke. Just for the record, and to get this particular matter straight, I have nothing but love and respect for the glorious history of Spain and its colonies, it is also MY history, and hence part of my cultural DNA. If your read the thread mentioned, you will see that the joke was intended to mock smug queens who think that history and culture began in the United States somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, and it’s their duty to spread culture and civilization to the “savages” from the rest of the world, notwithstanding the fact that those savages may have been the very creators of said culture.
Un fraternal abrazo. Tu MMII
Yes, you are right, you were assuming a lot…
Agua pasada….
If there is anyone who is interested in exploring Zarzuela, I am putting a collection together for Cruz, email me privately and I’ll email you the links. My email s available through my blog…
Silly people, it’ll be performed in Flemish.
Flemish: a language made up entirely of diphthongs, and no consonants at all.
So that was the Language that Sutherland sang it in? Finally an answer to the riddle.
No, the language that Sutherland sang was Netrebkish
Sutherland, Kenny …etc etc.I always liken the geriatric role casting of the Merry Widow as Opera’s swansong for a character akin to being some matronly lady president of a Rural Women’s Association doing a few musical numbers. Renowned for their judging of jams pickles and cakes of her fellow members down the years.
Of course the mandatory comments of how they will miss this or that Merry Widow is on everybody’s lips. Forgetting the usual cheating vocal ‘arh -ha’s’ that go with it, to make up for what long ago vanished. As some poor sod humps a aging feather boa diva around the stage in the waltz like a heavy bag of potatoes.
well, Kenny might have been not a young thing, but she certainly didn’t SOUND geriatric not did she LOOK anything close to geriatric.
Plus there is nothing wrong with an older lasy singing the role. There is nothing in the score that says something like Sopranos over 30 need not apply.
Susan Graham sang the role at the Met in 2004, and there was nothing geriatric about it.
Well Kenny in Streetcar named Desire was enough for me. Plainly not within a bull’s roar of ’40′. It looked like Stanley K. was roughing up his old auntie, (not a Blanche) who had come to visit.
Well, wonderful Harry, the next time YOU put together and performance of Street Car you can cast Danielle de Nisse; she might not be heard but damn it, she will look terrific in the part.
While we are at it, why not also cast her as Brunhilde? I mean, what’s with all these old fat women doing this role that is obviously a teenager, blond and pretty? ame with Elsa and Eva (both of them) and Elisabeth (both the Wagner and the verdi, since the french Queen married at around 15)
And let’s not forget Minnie, Anna Bolenna, Arabella, Leonora di vargas, shall I continue?
I don’t know what bothers me more, if the ageism or the implied insult to such a wonderful artist who can still sing circles around artists that could be her daughters.
Well Lindoro Almaviva, You cannot accuse me of being unkind in my reference to Kenny ‘being within a bulls roar’ of 40….a check: she’s actually ’60′. And if you think watching Streetcar’s Blanche at that age (and it was generally obvious in her stage movements) getting roughed and screwed by Stanley K. is not risible, I do not know what is. Perhaps his Stella’s having a late I.V.F and that is why Stanley is so frustrated and ‘hard up’.! The sheer believability of the story/opera tips and goes out the door. ‘Granny rape , here we come.’ It takes things into different sexual territory by default. It pisses me off …this hackneyed cliche casting of ‘What have we got?….Fine, there are a star anyway..cast them!’ Standing on a stage, performing opera is more than opening your gob. Otherwise let’s all stay home and listen to recordings, saving ourselves silly visual embarrassments.
Harry, 28 Aug 2010:
‘Standing on a stage, performing opera is more than opening your gob. Otherwise let’s all stay home and listen to recordings, saving ourselves silly visual embarrassments.’
Harry, 29 July 2010:
‘Now back to my recordings, where I can be my own perfect director, too….I create the settings to suit whatever opera I am listening to. And draw up my own season of opera for the next week.’
What a difference a month makes.
Armerjacquino, don’t encourage him!
Well amerjacquino & Cocky Kurwenal…
“What a difference a month makes”….you both appear taking umbrage to a difference : a firmer statement from me, that ‘all’ should start examining the casting travesties being inflicted on modern audiences.
Time people commenced thinking outside the square. Singers get blamed for singing the wrong roles. Ever thought a good part of the problem is ‘for their own selfish commercial interests’ that managements and agents push artists into such situations, in the first place.
I would rather have Flemish than Netrebkish
LMFAO! now, THAT is hilarious. damn you’re funny…d’you make that up? it should be officially coined by Cieca!!!
A bit out of subject here but, for anyone who has Sirius, the complete schedule is now available on the Met’s website calendar. New this year: the three Carnegie Hall concerts are being broadcasted.
http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/season/calendar.aspx
Stroman? You gotta be kidding me. The woman is a second-rate choreographer who only has a directing career because her husband died. Well maybe she and Renee can trade plastic surgery tips because Renee looks FABULOUS and Susan has one of the worst face lifts I have seen in the 21 century.
You are right on the beam and thanks for the ‘work done’ info. I thought she was just weird looking.
Whining here. Of all the 100′s of glorious operettas, why do we see only two, Die Fledermaus and Merry Widow?
Both Fledermaus and Merry Widow are masterpieces, but it is a shame that major houses tend to favour productions that make the first merely a romp and the second merely a sentimental farce. The cynical streaks in both pieces tend to get underplayed. Fledermaus is really quite scurrilous, while the Widow is less sugary sweet than she is so often made to appear.
Spot-on, Monty! Major opera houses generally have no idea how to present them. A few years back, I barely managed to contain a scream of “Don’t do it” when Lyric still did the newspaper and cigar schtick. The performance was only saved by the near miraculous Thomas Allen and Felicity Lott as the Eisensteins. Both had crack timing and sang the bejesus out of their roles. (Having done it, I swear Rosalinde is one of the most under-appreciated operatic roles.)
The only really good production of Fledermaus I’ve ever seen was at tiny West Bay Opera back in the 90s. Their secret was the director – the leading tenor with SF’s legendary G&S troupe, the Lamplighters. Rick Williams’s production was an utter delight, avoiding the usual cliches.
Yes, Monty – but they need to be done in small theatres with young actor-singers in the leads if you want that. As they were done originally. Yes, she’s a Witwe, but the point is she is Lustig because she married a much older, rich man. As Frasquita sings in the Card Scene: je suis veuve et j’hérite!
I saw a small-scale Fledermaus in Vienna a few years ago, mainly with young singers, and it was vicious in places. Eisenstein was thinking with his dick and Rosalinde was NOT happy. Silvestri, I have to say I can’t imagine Lott, a singer I find pallid in every sense, having the balls for Rosalinde.
Bumped into a soprano I haven’t seen in a while on the tube today – she’s about 28 or something, and told me she’d just got the role of Hannah. And I thought bloody brilliant, that is perfect casting – she’s a lovely lyric, good looking, with a lot of zest. That’s precisely the type of singer who should be undertaking the role – if Renee has had it on her wish-list, why has she waited until her mid-50s to do it?
Hannah has become some kind of insurance policy for ageing sopranos, that’s why — rather like Adriana, which is also really a younger woman’s role. If Renee had taken it when she was younger, people would have wondered if her top notes were going, or something.
My only live experience of the Widow was a camp John Copley production (is there any other kind of John Copley production?) at ENO a few years ago. It was pretty dire, apart from some of the more serious moments. Acres of cheap apricot satin everywhere — like going back to the 1970s. Amanda Roocroft was quite endearing as a kind of Northern lass Hannah, but she doesn’t have the essential glamour and her voice was a bit doughy for the role.
(By the way, I have always regretted that Leontyne never included ‘Vilja’ in one of her Prima Donna recitals. I can hear her singing it in my head, though)
One problem I see with the way operettas are presented nowadays is that they get a lot of slapstick added to them. Physical comedy. They are a lot more sophisticated than that. They are sentimental, romantic and yes, funny, even risque, but not vulgar.
Interesting question. I think it’s inertia; Fledermaus & Merry Widoware the only two operettas most opera people have heard of, so they’re the ones that get performed worldwide.
Also, light-opera repertories don’t travel well between countries in our internationally oriented opera world. The problem is all that spoken dialogue; it’s much easier to sing in a foreign language than it is to act in it, especially when you have to be funny as well. And the music, however charming, won’t make up for a weak book–and some of those non-comic operettas have pretty weak books–the way a through-composed opera can.
Since they are predominantly Austro-Hungarian, many operettas tell stories about gypsies. For contemporary tastes, a touchy subject that is not always dealt with in a politically correct manner.
All it needs is a Regie-director to get his over-intellectualising paws on it …
I never thought of operetta as a predominantly Austro-Hungarian genre ; the French have a pretty substantial tradition of their own (Offenbach!), and Gilbert & Sullivan is nothing to sneeze at.
Monty–you mean something like this?
http://www.operanews.com/operanews/templates/content.aspx?id=8326
(Actually, it sounds like a lot of fun!)
Indiana L — As it happens, I’ve seen the DVD of that Graf von Luxemburg and it wasn’t really much fun at all, apart from some Viennese cabaret artist playing the wife of the Russian ambassador. And the updated action didn’t really fit the story. Bo Skovhus pulls such odd faces that he seems to be in permanent pain, while Juliane Banse was far too genteel to be a shady theatrical lady.
True, the French had Offenbach and the English had Gilbert and Sullivan; meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarians had Johann Strauss, Franz von Suppé, Franz Lehár, Oscar Straus, Emmerich Kálmán, all quite popular in their time.
Tone isn’t always evident online, but whether the French and British had one composer each compared to an apparent multitude in German speaking countries or not, it doesn’t diminish the fact that Offenbach and G&S are bloody brilliant.
I’m hoping, given La Cieca’s photo, that Ms. Fleming might be doing Louise — the story of a simple French seamstress who finds love.
been there done that, and apparently she was nothing special on it.
I’m going to see Fleming in Capriccio in April and am looking forward to it. Face it, the Opera is light on plot. Words or Music? It’s basically an excuse for a Diva to stand still, wear a costume well, and make beautiful sounds.I think Renee can handle that.
Of course everyone is harping on Renee. Th real issue here is Stroman. Renee will be creamy, well costumed, scoopy and bland in her potrayal as always, but this Stroman woman should be kept as far away from the Met stage as possible. She is like Zambello (take away the talent) and Zimmerman (take away the intellect) combined. You all think that Bartlett Sher and John Doyle were bad Broadway transplants at the Met wait till you get a load of Susie.
Once more with yet more feeling – BRAVO!
Or Renee might really connect with the text and music and be extremely touching. It does happen, more than people like to admit. I’m the first to concede that she can be an immensely frustrating artist and leave me cold, or utterly infuriated a lot of the time, but she is also better than any other artist on the scene today at moving me to tears when she is really in touch with what she is doing.
Former category: Rodelinda (Met), Traviata (ROH), solo recital (Edinburgh), Desdemona (ROH)
Latter category: Rusalka (ROH), Rusalka (Met), Thais (ROH), solo recital (Barbican)
I think that Renee Fleming might be lovely in both voice and manner as Hanna. Certainly she will look good in the part.
And after all, the role sits well on an aging voice…..
What was it that someone said above? She’ll be 56 when she gets to it?
Fledermaus and Merry Widow are two obvious choices for Fleming. Hard to think she wouldn’t do them at some time. There are other choices that could fit her reasonably well. Mistress Ford in Falstaff for example. She also could probably do a fine Amelia in Boccanegra. Intermezzo and Ariadne are not far fetched. Vanessa most certainly.
I thought she already had Ariadne scheduled somewhere. Also Elsa in Lohengrin, or so someone said on here a while back.
And although she is probably past Norma, maybe she could try….. AIDA!
All joking aside, there is a long tradition of dive recording bits of roles they would never sing on stage. As part of that tradition, I want Fleming to record the tomb scene from AIDA. She would sing that gloriously.
Damn right she would. It’s got a little bit of a Traviata complex, that role, in that there are different sections that seem to require completely different types of soprano within the limits of our modern ideas about who is right for what.
Sills’s recorded excerpts from Aida are pretty marvellous in my view.
Mistress Ford? I don’t think Renee does ‘ensemble’ operas.
Fleming has already performed Bocanegra. I believe there is a recording of a broadcast running around. I checked TodOpera and they didn’t have it, but I am sure there has to be another website where it can be found.
She sid Amelia/Maria in London in, I think, 1995. I saw a recital she did around the same time at Wigmore Hall and was underwhelmed.
I can’t wait for Renee’s Vanessa. Coote, Streit, Blythe and Plishka in support, please.