World class
La Cieca has just learned that La Monnaie, recently awarded the prestigious title of Opera House of the Year by Opernwelt magazine, is planning to stream all of this season’s productions free online. Currently on view is Luigi Cherubini’s Médée, featuring Nadja Michael and Kurt Streit in a production by Opera Cake fave Krzysztof Warlikowski, with Les talens lyriques led by Christophe Rousset. Watch the complete performance.
Watching the “Medee” right now–I love the production–BUT…are (some, at least) the singers wired for sound.??..I am noticing what looks like mics taped to the sides of many faces..or is that some directorial./production conceit…?
presumably the mics are for the dialog which, as you may have noticed, was sometimes whispered.
Thanks, lorenzo–I suspected that might have been the purpose….do they turn them off during the pure singing?
I gotta say, the singing itself is a VERY mixed bag, itself…but the orchestra sounds very good!
…too many “itselfs” in the last post-sorry ’bout that!
I’m watching the Medee right now, and WOW. Nadja Michael’s singing not the best, but she’s a brilliant actress.
singing IS NOT the best. Oops.
Is she that brilliant an actress? I watched the video (though without an English libretto i was totally lost on the regie of it all. High concept just doesn’t work if you can’t read into the text as your eyes consume the staging ideas) and I could not tell if she was portraying Medee or Salome. Especially at the end. I guess on one hand there’s only so many ways you can pull off demented and murderous and scorned. But on the other, shouldn’t committing matricide put you in a totally different space than having sex with a dead body? Her other big role is Lady Macbeth right? I wonder if we’ll be seeing that patented Michael’s vacant stare in Act IV. I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s definitely a stage animal, but versatile?
Also that Amy Winehouse bee hive do in her early scenes was a hot ass mess.
OpNeophD
Frau Michael, in all fairness, once had a good voice, as a mezzo. She sang a good but LOUD Brangaene which I heard in Carnegie Hall about ten years back. I mean it was very finessed, but it was good enough. The Salome thing I saw two years ago was just a mess. So flat and screaming. Great dancer.
Who knows–the change from mezzo to sorta soprano must have been too much a stretch on her vocal mechanism. Oy! Now I remember the Lady Mac broadcast from Chicago–I hope no one jumps to their death upon hearing THAT mess comes to the Met in March!
Camille I think we both heard that Brangaene under Barenboim at Carnegie Hall with Waltraud Meier and her three changes of gown and Christian Franz. I was impressed with La Michael’s strapless evening gown and not much else. To me her Brangaene sounded like an unsteady lyric soprano with problems with support and a short upper register. Also, you don’t remember when Michael ran out of breath in the middle of a phrase during Brangaene’s watch in Act II? It was a glaring vocal faux pas. BTW: Michael”s Chicago Lady Macbeth had its admirers – evidently in the flesh she could make the eyes shortcircuit what the ears were taking in.
oh Gualtiero — just now saw this.
I have a different recollection from yours but I do recall that the Brangaene’s Watch was buggered up by breath problems. She breathed at a very inopportune time and didn’t have the proper proportional sense of the phrasingm the architecture so to speak, of that absolutely gorgeous and difficult piece of music.
Her dresses I don’t recall at all, funny. I DO recall Waltraud’s wonderful come hither red dress in the Second Act. As if Tristan didn’t already have the idea, I guess the red dress was meant to hit him sideways!!!
All I remember about Michael’s singing, mostly, was that it sounded very loud to me. She also wore the famous look (to me) “I’m not really a mezzo soprano and I could sing it better than you, you BYOTCH” on her face, which I’ve seen on the face of every Brangaene (winner of competition was Katharina Dalayman and first runner-up was Urmana) with the notable exception of Michelle DeYoung. DeYoung being the ONLY one I’ve ever seen and heard who looked and acted like a serving wench and nothing more, and she did a damn good job of it, too.
Michael’s voice at this point is just beyond a mess and a timebomb ticking and going off. I’m afraid there will be riots or another suicide at the MacBeth’s in March. I heard the Sleepwalking Scene from Chicago…like Halloween cackling. Vergogna. I am sure she could make a new career at pole dancing from what I’ve seen of her Salome and the sooner she starts, the better for us all.
I do remember very vividly the craziness that ensued between Waltraud and Franz and Danny Boy conducting at the end of the First Act. Wahnsinn. Delirious.
Ciao for now.
Camille
It wasn’t Winehouse, it was Snooki’s.
Wow! Watched as much as I could, due to time restraints and acid reflux onset.
What a shame she blew her pipes out because she at least looked fantastic. Too bad Alexandra Deshorties couldn’t have had this gig instead!
What is the music/song we hear at the start of Act II…?
thanx for the tip, brooklynpunk. i am just back home now and don’t know that i will get a chance to hear the Medee but thanx for informing me.
The Salle Gaveau website lists this as a ‘récital de chant’; I translate that as a recital. Unless you know something I don’t…
What I called wonderful is June’s program. But knowing her, I am pretty confident it will be a wonderful evening.
Jessye Norman is very well respected and loved, you are right. (Btw, how many centuries do you think will pass before a non-US singer is invited to America to sing the anthem on July 4th before the President of the United States?) But Jessye is not a cult figure, June is. The fact that June spends much of her time in France may have something to do with this.
Oops, this was supposed to be a reply to Nerva Nelli under 9.4.2.
Yes, and the fact she speaks French apparently well and is an intelligent woman, one intelligent enough to appreciate the fact that a prophet in one’s own country isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, after all.
I have the greatest respect for la “Yunie”, as old Italian men I knew called her. She sang an exquisite Amina in the Scala Sonnambula, the one and only time I’ve heard her. A beautiful woman with a beautiful voice, if not to all tastes.
Late June is great June, I am very much looking forward to those Manons, and Pat Nixon.