Chat in exile
Betsy is back in Pike or wherever she hails from, so this week we don’t have the usual smörgåsbord of listening selections she ordinarily provides. Our Own Hans Lick, though, has nominated a brace of broadcasts of possible interest to the cher public.
CBC TWO, 1:00 pm: Don Quichotte, Comédie héroïque en 5 actes sur un livret de Henri Cain d’après ‘Le Chevalier de la longue figure’ de Jacques le Lorrain (1904, d’après Don Quixote de Cervantès). Music: Jules Massenet (1842-1912), Libretto: Henri Cain (1859-1937). This performance: La Monnaie, Brussells May 08, 2010.
Silvia Tro Santafé, mezzo-soprano…..Dulcinée
José Van Dam, bass…..Don Quichotte
Werner Van Mechelen, baritone…..Sancho Pança
La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Marc Minkowski.
DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR, also at 1:00 pm: Giacomo Puccini: La Bohème, Oper in vier Akten. Libretto: Giuseppe Giacosa und Luigi Illica. Aufzeichnung vom 6.9.10.
Rodolfo – Stephen Costello, Tenor
Mimi – Krassimira Stoyanova, Sopran
Marcello – Boaz Daniel, Bariton
Musetta – Alexandra Reinprecht, Sopran
Schaunard – Adam Plachetka, Bariton
Colline – Sorin Coliban, Bass
Benoit / Alcindoro – Alfred Sramek, Bass
Chor und Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper; Leitung: Franz Welser-Möst.
Details for finding the online stations are, as always, at the indispensable Operacast. La Casa della Cieca may be found in the usual location.
I will listen to Trovatore from San Francisco with Radvan, Berti, Blyth and Hvor–and try to clean my place while chatting at La Casa della Cieca.
Even if I could, I would not want to hear another effing Boheme or Idomineo. Aiuto! (Although I do like Stoyanova).
I wonder how Jose Van Dam sounds these days. Wonderful singer.
A Saturday opera chat without La Bobolink?? Oh, the humanity!
Well, I’m just off to see Faust (in English, pah …!) at ENO in London. Directed by a guy who has made his name with Jersey Boys. Wish my luck!
I was due to be seeing that tonight, Monty. Toby Spence and Melody Moore, not too shabby. Let me know what you think.
Des McAnuff hasn’t ONLY done Jersey Boys, you know. He’s the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario and has a long ol’ CV in classic as well as musical theatre, although I think this may be his first opera.
Well, armer, Toby Spence was very impressive — I had no idea his voice had grown so much. (The last time I saw him was as Almaviva in 2006.) Melody Moore was very sound, and acted well, but lacks the right vocal and physical radiance for the role; Iain Paterson’s voice lies to high for Mephistopheles, though he gave a strong performance. Orchestra under Gardener was excellent, but the Coliseum really kills any sense of contact with instruments and voices. It’s like the Grosses Festpielhaus in Salzburg in that respect!
For our American readers, Peter Gelb was in the audience, since it’s a co-production with the Met.
I hadn’t heard of Des McAnuff (thank you for briefing me so conscientiously), because I don’t follow theatre much. The production was a bit all over the place — not sure if it wanted to be traditional, modern or a musical (there was some cringe-worthy marching action during the military bit of ‘Avant de quitter ces lieux’), and with some Big Themes (like the atomic bomb!) applied to the surface. Efficiently drilled, though, and quite fun use of video projections.
The trouble is, what does one do with Faust? It has some truly gorgeous music, and some very affecting moments, but it proceeds in fits and starts and is really now a rather fragile museum piece. Maybe it just needs to be played totally straight, with Marguerite with blonde plaits and a swaggering Mephisto with a feather …
Well Mephisto does say on arrival “la plume au chapeau”… so a feather he must have.
I am contemplating going to this Faust on Saturday with a friend (my husband will not go to anything in English at the Coli) – I am encouraged by your review. Thanks!
Well, manou, in general I would agree with your husband (I had a freebie tonight) — and the translation of Faust is in the worst tradition of stilted translationese doggerel, I’m afraid. Everyone sounds so fratefully polate.
I’d be interested to hear what you think of the show, since I always respect your opinions on here. I have to say I didn’t find it an uplifting or stimulating evening of music theatre, but my God, it has some wonderful tunes!
Thanks for the report. I am looking forward to seeing it- I don’t know Faust at all, apart from the Jewel Song and the astounding final trio; don’t even know ‘Salut Demeure’, other than something I’ve heard of that is an aria.
You must know ‘Avant de quitter ces lieux’ too, I’m sure, armer. That final trio is a magnificent, spine-tingling, tear-jerking moment, but it is a bit of a long time coming, I always find!
Talking of great French trios, on a similar level is the Antonia/Antonia’s Mother/Dr Miracle number from Hoffmann.
Et “Gloire éternelle de nos aieux”, alors! At one stage it was nearly the French national anthem.
I’m a fool, of course I know Valentin’s aria. I used, indeed, to sing it back in the days when I thought (a) I was a baritone and (b) I was going to be an opera singer.
And you’re dead right about the Hoffmann trio. Have you heard the live Met version from (I think) the 50s, with my new obsession Lucine Amara? Stunning.
manou — I have to confess I can’t remember how that tune goes. I probably still had the soldiers’ chorus in my head.(It was staged here as a human interest-filled walking-wounded episode of course, with a shell-shocked soldat doing a turn at one carefully engineered juncture.)
armer — I must confess I haven’t heard Amara do Antonia. She was Queen B at the Met, wasn’t she?
This isn’t bad either. And it has the wonderful Jose Van Dam as a major plus (the trio starts about four minutes in).
Monty – “Gloire Eternelle” is the Soldier’s Chorus.
Doh! I always think of that as ‘Déposons les armes’, which of course is before The Big Tune. I’ve never actually thought about what the words were when the tune does come. Perhaps because I have these deathless words in my mind; they are more catchy than the — though you’d never think it — brand new ENO translation, it must be said:
Oh Aunt Jemima, look at your Uncle Jim
He’s in the duck pond
Learning how to swim.
First he does the breast stroke,
Then he does the side,
Now he’s under the water
Swimming against the tide.
Armerjacquino, a few years ago the Met re-broadcast a Hoffman with Amara–probably the same one you heard–and I too was stunned. The one time I saw Amara live was a late-career (’74 or ’75–too lazy to check) Countess Almaviva, and I was so impressed I ordered a recital album she had had made to celebrate her 25th Met anniversary (got a flyer about the album in return for my life’s only fan letter, in which I repeated the wish my companions at the event had expressed that she would be singing the Marschallin the next day). On the album, I found the same frustrating limitations that I had noted in other Met broadcasts–good technical accomplishment (lovely high pianissimi), but foursquare phrasing, total predictability in her use of effects (determined by her standard practice, it seemed, rather than by the particular aria). I’m a techno-ignoramus, so I can’t really describe my reaction very helpfully. I seem to remember reading, in a laudatory article about her from an old Opera Quarterly (which you might enjoy), that the problem in her career was miscasting. I don’t remember that the “correct” casting was stated, though I got the impression that she might have been better as a Strauss singer; and it’s true that I’m most disappointed in her Verdi. But I have to say that my experience of her juxtaposes disappointment with these moments of awe. My own view; tastes differ, of course (and I won’t start on Janowitz….).
I fully and heartily agree about the Hoffmann trio. Here’s a WONDERFUL version for your viewing and listening pleasure- Catherine Malfitano (in GREAT voice), James Morris, and Jean Kraft as the mother. It’s fabulous!!
damn steve that hoffman trio was very intense. that fire in malfitano’s eyes was exactly what trebs was missing in hoffman this past season. i try to cut the girl some slack–yes, she needs my consolation–and yet there’s this consistent emptiness of the eyes once the voice hits the high stuff… kinda very disappointing….
but with this one i am just thrilled. the audience cannot contain their excitement and even jimmy had to applaud them immediately after the last conductorial swish was over with…..
bravi
Monty – I am an idiot. It should be “Gloire immortelle de nos Aieux”. But I do like your version more!
manou — you’re not an idiot at all. I didn’t even have a vague idea of what the words were at that point. All I’ve ever seen it as is a great bit of oompah.
The more I think about last night’s production, the more I think it is packed with half-digested ideas applied to a piece that can’t really take them.
“My mother murdered a kangaroo.”
Or perhaps
“Our tomcat swallowed a kangaroo” or even
“My father
Swallowed a kangaroo!
Gave us
The grisly parts to chew!
First one leg
Then the other one, too!
Hominy Grits!
Hominy Grits!
And grisly kangaroo! “
Damn! I’ve just watched that Malfitano/Morris/Kraft Hoffmann trio like 10 times. It doesn’t get any better than that and that audience knows it – a demented soprano in her prime, a bass for the ages in his prime and the best MET comprimaria of the last 50 years in her prime (don’t argue – Jean f’n Kraft rules!) all at once in roles that suit them perfectly and they all sing the shit out of it. When an audience can’t wait to scream AND random members of the public rise to their feet mid show, you know it’s been nailed.
Monty, I question this Faust being a co-prod with the Met, since we spent a whole bunch of money on a perfectly awful new Faust just a few years back. Soile Isokoski wore a blonde wig all right that made it quite clear why she’s never been kissed — she’s the ugliest girl in town. And Andrei Serban’s production made it clear that she was the only virgin in town too. With all its rather saccharine charms, I can’t believe Faust is really what the Met audience wants or needs now in yet another dim production.
So are you SURE?
Hansi — a line in the programme (hastily retrieved from the bathroom) reads: ‘A co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New York’, so I guess I can be sure.
And soprano Melody Moore isn’t too flatteringly wigged and costumed in this production either — even before the final scene, where she appears in a prisoner’s smock with sensible shoes and cropped hair.
Amazingly, there are already clips from this ENO effort on YouTube.
Distinct dearth of marsupials.
Thanks for your impressions on Faust! Had no doubt that Toby Spence would be great (he is great singer), now I am looking forward to attending (later in the run).
Tenorfach
Tenorfach — with your name, you should have a view on this, but I was actually wondering whether Spence might manage (a very lyric) Lohengrin one day.
I had always thought of him as a bit of the Rolfe Johnston type of singer, but he was getting a surprisingly big sound out tonight. And to sound big at the Coliseum, the power needs to be there.
MontyNostry – his voice has certainly developed over the last few years, but not nearly as much as one could expect. Spence being 41 (and looking 25) it could just be that his voice is late in maturing, so if his voice stays it is not at all an impossibility to perhaps see him sing Lohengrin one day, but as you say, probably a very lyric one.
In the meantime I hope to hear him in more lieder, something I am beginning to discover being introduced to the art form by Keenlyside and Spence, quite recently, I like what I hear and will like to explore.
And of course I look forward to hearing Faust later on, having heard Spence in “Barber” and “Rake’s Progress”, this should be interesting.
Tenorfach
Ps. You mind this an interesting read:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/toby-spence–a-rising-star-reveals-his-own-faustian-pact-2081336.html
Toby Spence vouchsafed a similar kiss’n'tell exposé when he sang Tom Rakewell at Covent Garden last season. How many more can he do? If he ever gets round to Lohengrin, perhaps he will reveal that he used to swig communion wine from the grail as a choirboy, or something equally shocking.
He is in danger of becoming the Andrea Gruber of tenors in this respect …
Don’t think he is quite that bad ……. but suppose singers who speaks publically about their life and choices, risk being “judged” in such manner. Hence many chose not to.
If – and a big if – there is a Lohrengrin in his future all comes down to if the voice can carry the role and if Spence would want to.
He is apparently doing Faust well, but will the voice carry anything heavier?? We shall see.
Tenorfach
terribly OT, but is Elektra a sexist work?
*thinks*
No.
could u elaborate on that
I think the burden of proof is on you, isn’t it? Why do you find it sexist?
i just started thinking while in a daze, why couldn’t elektra have done what she wanted to do? she seemed very much debilitated.
but yes, she was a product of her time. i would love to hear a revolutionary take on the myth, maybe a new opera that rewrites it, or with a libretto that is aware of feminist theory the same way Hofmannsthal was of Freud’s penis-envy theory
Happy daze are here again.
The truly pathetic, corrupt figure in ELEKTRA is Aegisthus, though, surely? Elektra has a nobility, if a psychotic one. Even- and I know I’m stretching it here- Chrysothemis could be seen as being trapped by the patriarchal expectations of a young woman of her time; all that ‘I want to have kids’ stuff…
i should stop smoking
I don’t think you should worry too much about labelling Greek myths with modern day isms. One good thing you can say about Electra is that mourning becomes her.
rommie, I don’t think so. The women are trapped in certain roles (wie aufgehaengte Voegel, as Chrysothemis says, in one of my fave lines from the piece), but they are not considered lesser beings for that. Elektra is pretty strong, even if she is deeply f**ed-up. Remember, too that Klyt was also punishing Agamemnon for sacrificing one of her daughters. And the men in the piece are certainly not presented as in any way superior to the women — and certainly in a lot less insightful detail.
I think it’s difficult to look at the representation of women in Greek myths without considering that ancient greece was a society where notions of the feminine and masculine/active and passive are so firmly established. Myths such as elektra, medea, etc. are so compelling since these are women who transgress such “natural” boundaries by adopting a masculine agency and murdering members of their own family. I don’t think one can really call this sexist, since a greek audience would find the corollary just as horrifying–a man who has been “feminized”, such as aegisthus.
well, i agree, but just to say i think medea is physically masculinized because she HERSELF kills her children while Elektra has to wait for her brother
You’re definitely correct….medea is a much more extreme example, and I haven’t read the oresteia in a while. That Elektra is of course much less “butch” than we see in stagings of strauss’ version.
An interesting and pertinent discussion of women in Greek tragedies is in Orlando Patterson’s book Freedom.
Did Bing (Crosby, not Rudolph) ever sing Strauss, manou? (I know Nelson Eddy did.)
He most certainly did………..Johann Strauss.
Not sure about the Bing Crosby connection -- this, perhaps?
Yesterday, Blythe’s Azucena from San Francisco was a big disappointment for me: off pitch singing, sloppy phrasing, uninteresting interpretation and foggy voice production. I am reminded of this as I listen to Dalis’ Azucena (Price, Corelli, ’61). Dalis sings the role better and has much more dramatic intensity–even if one may not that fond of the voice itself.
I count myself as a Dalis fan.
I love Dalis in Verdi, greatly underrated. Her Italian is pretty ropey, mind.
Clita, I heard (some) of the Trovatore from SFO too.
Aside from Ulrica, I think the three big Verdi Mezzo roles aren’t ideal for Blythe. Aside from the snippets I heard yesterday, I heard Blythe sing the Amnernis/Aida duet with Ghoul last year at the Met’s 125th anniversary gala.
Almost to my horror, I thought Ghoul sounded more appropriate than Blythe did. Blythe seemed to have to work very, very hard just to get through Amneris’ lines in the act 2 duet and she made Ghoul sound idiomatic (!!!!!!!).
My guess is that Amneris and even parts of Azucena lie uncomfortably against the registers in Blythe’s voice. She herself said that she was reluctant to take on Fricka as it went up awkwardly against her middle/upper break. Perhaps the Verdi roles cause her a similar problem. Also Blythe does not see to have and extension into the Bflat/B natural area; Azucena’s final Bflat was only charitably an A natural, perhaps even less than that.
It’s maybe odd as I consider Blythe a contralto and other contraltos have managed to master the Amneris/Eboli roles which seem to be in a no man’s land between soprano and mezzo but maybe today’s audiences are no longer willing to listen to that kind of solution.
It’s a bit odd because I thought Diadkova, who I liked a lot, was also a contralto with a short top but I thought her Azucena was terrific (I heard it in a summer parks concert about ten years ago) aside from some iffy top notes. But then Diadkova is no longer singing much here in the US, is she?
Sorry to hear that about Blythe. She was magnificent as Azucena in London a couple of years ago. I hadn’t been a fan of hers up till then, but she was mightily impressive.
Having heard Zajick in an otherwise not-great TROVATORE at the Met last year, I don’t really see why they’d cast anyone else as Azucena.
True, she seems to be heads above all the competition but there are two things to consider.
Zajick can’t be everywhere at once, so theaters have to turn to other solutions for casting these roles.
Also, Dolora is 58 this year. She doesn’t show up at all in the Met Futures site for next season and later. And this season at the Met she’s doing four Azucena’s.That’s all. So she may be finishing up her peak period. I thought she was going to do either Gertrude or the Witch in H&G bu that’s not until the Met’s 2011-12 season.
What about D’Intino as Azucena?