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.
BRAVA, La Monnaie..!!!
..I am really looking forward to getting to see and hear the up-coming “Oedipe” ..and, the rest of the season.!
-what Oedipe? Stravinsky’s, Enescu’s or Leoncavallo’s ?
Enescu.
bien, bien, merci, c’est un opéra français je crois
http://www.lamonnaie.be/fr/opera/145/
Love the orchestra playing on ancient instruments, but no serpent.
Does Cherubini call for one? I glanced through the score and found a trombone employed for a single march, but otherwise the “brass” seems to consist entirely of 4 horns…
Good for them! More power to the revolution …
Would absolutely love to listen to this but I hesitate on account of Die Michael. Has anyone here heard it and survived to tell the tale?
Don’t hesitate too long, Camille…and decide for yourself… according to the information on the site, this (Medee) will only be availible thru tomorrow (Oct 13th)
Will write about it too. Just being so terribly busy at work
That show is EXTRAORDINARY and especially in auditorium. Nadia Michael is not my fave singer but in this show she rocked my world. Christophe Rousset and his orchestra were really great too. But the production… man! Bless Warlikowski.
I’ll try and write a few lines to help you read into the show (to see beyond the image of Medea as Amy Winehouse).
LaC, good news is that La Monnaie will put all their shows available on the Internet this year, each after its run in the theater. That includes Rusalka which I think is the best Herheim production to date; I am SURE you’re gonna love it too (even if the cast in Dresden was better, but Monogarova sounds fantastic.)
Was lucky to see some other really good shows Sept/Oct — Tannhäuser in Paris is excellent, very good La Clemenza di Tito in Paris too, WONDERFUL Wozzeck in Basel, and a pretty extraordinary War and Peace in Cologne. Will blog when I get a little bit of time.
Cheers
Speaking of passing laws, I suggest we pass one banning the use of the term “show” when referring to opera. Let’s save that word for The Producers and Barnum and Bailey. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves. Let’s use “production” or “performance” instead.
I’ll write my senator.
Bravo! I agree. Fuck “show”
There’s no business
Like performance business,
There’s no business, I know.
Heh! Another Op’nin, Another Performance
In Philly, Boston or Baltimerformance…
“That includes Rusalka which I think is the best Herheim production to date; I am SURE you’re gonna love it too (even if the cast in Dresden was better, but Monogarova sounds fantastic.)”
DYING to see this. One of my fav operas as directed by one of the most interesting directors working in opera!
what is the schedule, how do we know in advance we can watch on Internet ? ??
What an extraordinary opportunity! I can’t wait to see them all, and especially Moronagova as Rusalka. She’s amazing.
Can’t the EU pass laws against Nadja Michael’s voice being disseminated in its member countries?
The EU is too busy eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets whilst staring into the abyss.
That is positively Tolkienesque, dearest Manou.
I always want to write Manon when addressing you. Indeed, I think of you as Manon (Massenet, of course) – weird huh?
You probably don’t even own a parasol or swing.
I have an umbrella and a wonky chair – will that do?
What I want to know is why our European brethren don’t rush at her and consume her a la “Dawn of the Dead.”
That’s what I would do. In fact, I banged my head against my monitor trying to do just that to the clip.
No doubt she satisfies someone’s definition of a communicative and musical singer.
To me she sounds like awful. Ugly. Insulting to my ears. And her acting is not adequate to cover for that donkey living in her throat.
Who the hell do these impressarios think she is? Schroeder-Devrient? Late Pasta?
Ute Lemper would be preferable. Today’s version of Ute Lemper even.
I feel compelled to point out that, awful singer though she is, Nadja Michael does have an amazing voice. True, she may as well not have for all the difference it makes to one’s ability to endure her persistently flat caterwauling, but I see it more along the lines of a good instrument deployed by a donkey, rather than a lady with a donkey in her throat.
Her ROH Salome was immensely frustrating because the timbre and refulgence at the top was frequently downright thrilling- just inexcusably flat for the most part.
Prediction:
‘I can’t believe you think she’s a good singer! She caterwauls and is flat!’
Just a prediction.
You forgot the part where I get called a deaf idiot who knows nothing about opera- nothing, an apologist for poor singing, and responsible for the decline in operatic standards the world over.
Wow. Thanks, Armerj.
You could probably write all my posts for me, right?
Ultimately, Cocky, I don’t think it matters whether the problem is voice or technique (I actually meant both – it is, after all, a trained Donkey.)
I think the performing arts are a competitive business. Does anyone really think the great classical dancers would have achieved their best if their competition had been the June Taylor Dancers, or God forbid, Boogaloo Shrimp?
Would Rubinstein have ever plugged the holes in his technique if Horowitz had not come on the scene?
I don’t think they would have been all that motivated. I think the same for singers.
For instance, I think Anna would be a far greater singer and artist if she had more competition. In fact, given her success, it is very gratifying to see her trying to improve as much as she has.
Btw, I want to clarify my comments regarding the British music critics, using Dame Janet Baker as an example.
First, I will say that I cherish a good deal of her singing. Her Elgar is superb. And she could muster up some real fireworks as a Handelian. Her Mozart and Schubert I found joyless and unsuitable (for the most part).
With all that, one would think (from reading the judgments of the British critics, that she was the alpha and omega of mezzos. And this was a woman who really did not have the most dazzling international career (a signficant one to be sure, especially as a recitalist and concert singer), but did she really sing that much outside of Britain? Did she put the voice to the sort of tests and struggles in different houses all over the world that most singers who achieve her reputation have done? I would need to be convinced of that, I think.
Now, and I don’t want to be cynical, but her statement that she preferred singing close to home where serious artistic values could be counted on always struck me as a copout and elitist in the extreme. Yet, the British critics used it as a badge of her heilige kunst.
Also, the voice could be somewhat limited in sound. Again, you would never have known it from the British critics for whom “serious artist” was both a sword and shield.
Take it away, ArmerJ.
LT, don’t worry, AJ will write all your posts from now on. He’s that good.
Wow, the two of you are really ganging up on me.
I guess I have worn out my welcome here.
Ta.
luvtennis, WAIT!
My post wasn’t aimed at you in the slightest- it was a joke about a prevailing, and oft-mentioned, perceived mentality on parterre.
All I was saying is that sometimes a post such as cocky’s- which says, more or less, ‘she is a dreadful singer with a great instrument’- is interpreted as ‘he thinks she’s good! He knows nothing!’ And I can’t speak for him, but I think that was the spirit in which he replied.
For what it’s worth, I can’t stand Michael. Please don’t think I was having a pop at you- I promise you I wasn’t.
LT you absolutely, positively can not go into self-imposed exile, we need you around here.
Well – we know how to lure Liana back here, but what might work for luvtennis?
….I could get a parasol?
ON:
No self-imposed exile! I try to avoid self-aggrandizing, psycho-dramatic theatrics in cyberspace. I save that for real life!
Hey, Lee was a star at Juilliard back when that meant a lot. A serious musician was she. Did her charming Mississippi accent lend her Italian and German an occasional languor? Sometimes, but who the fuck cares. I understand what she is saying and God gave her the voice to sing that music. SHould she have stayed a Bess, as Zinka is rumored to have advised.
“SHe is not italianate enough (or germanic enough or bulgarian enough)” are criticisms that need to be very carefully used since they have a ugly exclusionary connotation that flies in the face of the universality of these works. If you gotta be Italian to appreciate or to perform Italian opera, then the works are nothing more than regional, provincial curiosities, like many other perfectly good art-forms (traditions). I am not so reductionist in my assessment of European opera (at least with regard to those works which were written for the international scene. There are certainly operas that are almost entirely regional in their appeal.)
And the RCA Ballo, despite some occasional vocal overacting from Lee (I believe that she was provoked to such excess – which was not a feature of earlier recordings – because of the tiresome and constant and often unfair criticism of her vocal acting) is gloriously sung. Her way with Consentimi Signore will earn her a spot in heaven for sure. And God knows, most of the other recordings have huge drawbacks. On balance the RCA, and the two EMI performances with Callas and Arroyo respectively are the recordings of choice.
Right on, luvtennis, let’s have a Billy Budd or a Porgy and Bess cast with Italian and French singers. I’m sure all Parterrians would just LOVE to hear that kind of “universal” interpretation!
Oedipe:
Not sure what you are implying, but I would have no problem with that at all. Why should I if the performers can sing the music? If parterrans object, that is their affair and their problem. Why the hell should I care? I am not on the verge of Facebook suicide because of the cool, mean regie kids, after all. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
I have many issues no doubt – “subject to peer pressure” is not one of them. In fact, I was popular in high school. I exerted the peer pressure, tee hee.
I wasn’t in any way or manner referring to you personally, luvtennis. It’s just that I get a strong allergic reaction to the idea of “universality”, an idea which -in my book- tends to serve the stronger cultures and countries to the detriment of the weaker ones, and which sooner or later leads to drab uniformity of expression and tastes.
Understood, Oedipe.
I agree that ethnic or national culture provides the soil in which the artist cultivates and grows the work – that fact has to be respected and appreciated. But you don’t gotta be from France to make a kickass souffle.
Right?
Heh, is this where I post Anna and Erwin’s ‘Bess You Is My Woman Now’?
Well, I am not sure cooking is the most relevant analogy, but even so: if you want to pass for a French cook, you better immerse yourself extensively in the French (cooking) culture, until you get a good handle on it. A good soufflé does not make you a French cook!
AJ:
Are you suggesting that Anna hasn’t immersed herself in Jewish culture (Gershwin was Jewish, nu?)?
Oedipe:
I make a kickass Thai lemongrass chicken. Do I know Thai culinary culture? Maybe a little but not to the extent of immersion. No one complains when eating it.
“My father spoke a High Middle Polish. I am easily assimilated.”
Well, I just finished watching it, the first time I’d ever seen or listened to a complete French version. What an experience! What intrigued me most was how different this felt from the Italian version with the Lachner recits. Excellent acting, generally unpleasant singing, I’m afraid, but worth watching anyway, just to experience the French version. The staging was ugly but watchable, occasionally inspired. Nadja Michael is often thrilling, in spite of her singing. I’m glad to have seen this. Thanks for the heads-up, La Cieca.
I wish they’d stream last season’s too. I want Rough and Regie to explain Castellucci’s Parsifal production to me.
Browsing through the Belgian opera websites, look what I found!
http://www.operaliege.be/activites/operas/manon
June Anderson sings Manon for the first time in Liege in June! Good for her! I would say a shame that although regarded as a sort of living treasure in France and Belgium she is not given these sorts of opportunities in her own country anymore but then I shudder to think of the sort of comments that would be posted about her if she were still singing at the Met.
I have long sought a phrase to describe June Anderson, and you have provided it: “sort of living.”
Happy to oblige!
Rotflmao.
When did Anderson’s star descend? She was a big name in the mid to late 80s/early 90s, but I never figured out why her career lost momentum. Was there a vocal crisis? If so, when?
No there was not a vocal crisis but she became discontented with doing only bel canto/Sutherland type parts perhaps not coincidentally around the same time that the very highest notes in her voice became rather unreliable. She last sang at the Met 2001, Covent Garden 1997, La Scala around the same time. Since then she has kept busy doing all sorts of new things mostly but not entirely in France and Belgium. Pat Nixon in Nixon in China at the Chatelet is coming up as our hostess has already informed us.
Didn’t nearly all of her NY performance receive lukewarm critical and public acclaim? Look I love me some June Anderson on a pure vocal technician angle. But I’m not sure she ever had more than about 6 stock motions, hands outstretched at the side, swanning back and forth, the head always tilted up to the side, hand to the mouth (like she had a secret) and always the eyes sort of vaguely staring into space. Very stiff. I think that as she’s gotten older she’s loosened up immensely and footage I’ve seen of her in the aughts feels more dramatically incisive. But I think in the 80s and 90s she sort of suffered the Ruth Ann Swenson problem. Really were any of that generations great dramatic coloraturas, Devia, Gruberova, well received in NY? Everyone was either dealing with the memory of Sutherland. Or, in the lighter parts, battling with the Kathy Battle machine.
Don’t know ON about NY I was in London then but she did sing quite a lot at the Met including a new Lucia in a Zambello production that was pretty universally detested. I can only speak for what I saw and I saw everything she did in London. What won my undying fandom was the Puritanis she did in about 92 with Giuseppe Sabbatini, Dmitri H in his opera debut I think and Robert Lloyd and those stock gestures you mention all vanished, she was quite incredible,at the end of Act One she tore off her wedding dress and veil when Arturo did not turn up to marry her, tore the ring off her finger and flung it across the stage, rolled around on the floor in her undies singing the finale. In the mad scene she climbed up a wall very high above the stage and sang the first part perched on top, then descended and sang the cabaletta whilst throwing straw in the air. It was amazing. That production was supposed to be filmed but the Royal Opera decided to preserve Maria Ewing’s Salome instead.
I also love her recordings, I just love her voice.
She was sure a stunning Semiramide and maybe the gestures were stock, but the sparks between her and Sam R. really sizzled on stage. She sang Rossini in a way that made the roles her own. She is a wonderful, thoughtful artist.
Grim are you, by chance, attending a Coburn Lucia in WNO?
ON I have not booked yet but I do plan to go at some point. Are you?
Yes I’m going to the opening on Nov 10, if you attend let me know, will try and say hi during intermission or before.
Dear esteemed OpNeo:
June was very controversial throughout her career in NYC. I believe she was pretty popular during her early NYCO days but she was following in the shadow of Beverly Sills even appearing in her roles in the productions Beverly created. Later June worked rather unhappily with Beverly who tried to punish her when June started getting gigs in Europe that conflicted with her old NYCO contracts. Winifred Faix Brown also got shit from Beverly when the same thing happened to her.
After her successes in Europe in the eighties, June came to the Met in a new “Rigoletto” production. It was a success for her. However, I heard her in pretty much everything from the “Semiramide” in 1990 on in New York and I heard her earlier in Chicago in Handel’s “Orlando” and “Samson”.
My friends used to refer to something in June’s upper middle register that we called “June’s white noise”. The middle was quite lush and round like a full lyric. Then ascending above G to maybe B natural the sound would get dry, white and whiny with a shallow edgy quality. Then above high C was smooth sailing. Also June was not always a warm or persuasive actress as has been suggested earlier in this thread. I remember June singing “Ah forse lui…Sempre Libera” on a televised concert from Lincoln Center. She sang the notes well enough but had no clue as to what the words meant. She sang the cavatina and the cabaletta with the same tempo and tone color barely differentiating the contrasted moods and qualities. No Violetta there. June wasn’t just out of conservatory at that point so there was no excuse. I think she got better later when some directors got their hands on her and worked with her. The voice and personality never radiated warmth.
It was Eve Queler who suggested to June that she expand beyond bel canto. Queler felt that June could handle all the roles Caballé sang in her middle career – Roberto Devereux, Lucrezia Borgia etc. I liked June in “Ernani” with OONY. June tried out roles like Maria in “Mazeppa” for Eve Queler, her only Russian role that I know of. BTW: June has been singing Norma successfully in Europe for well over a decade now.
I heard June’s last Met engagement as Violetta – the technique was still problematic but she was very on top of the role. June by then interpreted the Act I double aria dramatically and had convincing stage business throughout. But some of the youthful freshness was gone and people were very critical and dismissive. They had had enough of her and wanted something new.
Postscript: you can hear the “white noise” effect in her Decca recording of “Rigoletto” with Nucci and Pavarotti under Chailly. The weird thing is that the sound is white and edgy so it sounds sharp and yet it is also a fixed sound lacking harmonics and “upper partial” so it also sounds flat. So she sounds flat and sharp simultaneously. I also have problems with June’s Anna in the Philips recording of “Maometto Secondo”. The role is lowish with a lot of middle and lower middle written for Isabella Colbran who had a falcon like range. June’s lower range is very unsteady and unsupported with the tone drooping and wobbling a bit like late Sutherland. Another problem I noticed throughout her New York career from the 90′s on.
I suppose we’ll have to keep lighting out candles for that June Anderson Elektra Grimy. I’ll add some roots to the prayer process.
Yes please do ON, how kind, maybe PD will join her as Orest!
Don’t forget Cecilia Bartoli’s hair-raising Klytemnästra.
Indeed, I can’t think of any living American singer that’s more of a cult figure in France than June Anderson. By the way, she will be giving a wonderful recital at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on November 16.
http://www.sallegaveau.com/la-saison/487/june-anderson
That does look wonderful, thank you for that!
From their website:
Une histoire digne d’un conte
June Anderson fait partie du cercle très restreint d’artistes dont le nom suscite une admiration sans réserve. Et à l’exceptionnel talent s’ajoute l’aura d’une « belle personne ».
J’adore!
Closer home, tomorrow, her only American appearance this year?
http://www.liederalive.org/LIEDER_ALIVE!/LIEDER_ALIVE!_June_Anderson.html
“Ms. Anderson is wearing a Maurizio Galante creation.”
Rude French talking through her performance:
It’s the technicians that are talking, Buster. They have many rights, like talk through a performance, go on strike and sack a production and even compromise the financial health of a theater.
“I can’t think of any living American singer that’s more of a cult figure in France than June Anderson”
What about Jessye Norman???? Even Bricktop never got asked to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QQ2k3UpHwQ
That Gaveau date looks like a concert, not a recital.
And– you know *an avance* that it will be wonderful? Bravo!
*en* avance, oui, oui…
I believe Mme. Norman would pronounce it “an avahnce,” so you were right the first time.
“June Anderson…a sort of living treasure….”
Lisa della Casa is also a living treasure, but I would not wish to hear or see her as Manon either.
Yes very amusing, thank you so much.