This time out she’s taking the bows
So, according to the list of musical numbers in the Met’s new pastiche The Enchanted Island, guess who gets the showstopping “11 o’clock” spot? Why, none other than The Booty of the Baroque herself, Danielle DeNiese, who will (no doubt) set the rafters ringing with “Can you feel the heavens are reeling,” an adaptation of “Agitata da due venti” from Vivaldi’s Griselda, RV 718, Act II, scene 2. (In its original Italian version, especially as performed by Cecilia Bartoli, this piece is familarly known as the “I shouldn’t have had that second Starbucks” aria.)
I hear word that this young gal is DeNiese’s understudy.
I am amazed…Joyce and David allowing themselves to be *upstaged* by Danielle!
Is William Christie worth all this trouble?
Wrong Christie louann (and not Agatha either).
?
“William Christie, Conductor The Enchanted Island”
http://tinyurl.com/cpauuvu
What a shmatte she’s wearing.
oh. thank you.
How about a new Norma with Dani and Nino alternating roles? Kiri as Clotilde — hers was actually the most youthful-sounding female voice in Saturday’s broadcast of Fille.
this pastiche looks like a misfire right off the bat with 43 sleeping pills by Handel and Vivaldi, just about the lamest, dullest and most annoying of composers. Maybe the new text will brighten up the symmetric music and I do like 15 minutes or so of Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda but in general LOATHE baroque. I’ve come across a lot of baroque fans in my time too and exactly like the music they admire, they’re also lame, dull and annoying. I run from them, because they stick like crazy glue.
I predict a lot of yawning on New Year’s Eve. Worst of it is, I’ll be there. Though I’m having second thoughts now. But too late, my friends aren’t changing plans this late in the game. As for Danielle de Niese, being an attractive woman on top of a successful opera singer will raise the wrath of many unsuccessful queens, unsuccessful either in the looks and/or career departments so yeah … yawn
Talk about lame, dull, and annoying.
You rock Peter.
Thanks Louann! Happy New Year!
“Handel and Vivaldi, just about the lamest, dullest and most annoying of composers”
No, I can’t agree. I think it would be more accurate to describe, say, Telemann as ‘dull or annoying’
“I predict a lot of yawning on New Year’s Eve. Worst of it is, I’ll be there”
Ok but I still look forward to your report here.
It isn’t ‘accurate’ or inaccurate for that matter to describe any composer as dull or annoying, because boredom and annoyance are personal. Robust opinions are one thing but the moment one forgets their subjectivity (this is ‘accurate’, this is ‘true’) things get pretty solipsistic.
AJ,
Yes ok.
But if one brings up the topic of ‘baroque dullness’ I think it’s fair to point out that there is way more dross in Telemann’s oeuvre compared to Handel or Vivaldi.
(My apologies to any Telemann fiends out there)
Telemann was a surprisingly varied as well as prolific composer. The people who dismiss him as boring have rarely heard more than a handful of his works. A lot of people found Mozart boring until the 1920s, by the way.
Thank you so much for insulting so many of us simply because who happen to like Baroque opera. I imagine after reading this, quite a lot of people will have a few things to say about you.
And we are grateful to see you running from us; it spares us from having to interact with you. Yikes.
Guess what, one can love Baroque music and music from other periods too. Opera began about 1600, people who cut themselves off from the first 150 years are missing a lot.
Agreed! Bravo! Have a couple of Rémy-Martins before the show – it is a show, not an opera – to stay awake.
What, exactly, is the difference between a show and an opera and what is worthy of a bravo in deciding to hate something before one has even seen it?
An opera is something that you like and a show is something that you think you’ll hate.
Seriously, if a pasticcio is not an opera, than neither is a masque, or a singspiel, or a dramma per musica, or an opera bouffe, or a Savoy opera, or…
…a dramma giocoso?
And let us not forget that pasticcio means mess in Italian (not forgetting pasticcio di maccheroni – yum).
Thanks ardath_bey
ardath_bey emitted:
“But too late, my friends aren’t changing plans this late in the game.”
Neither one?
Why on Earth is Ariel singing “Arise, ye subterranean winds,” arguably one of the most famous Baroque arias for bass?
Because this is pastiche and:
A) all the rules become flexible when such assembled entertainments are constructed, and
B) Baroque composers often borrowed from themselves and, in the process, set arias for different vocal ranges than the “original” version. Actually, many Baroque operas we know and love are already pastiches to one degree or another: Handel’s famous Ombra mai fu from Xerxes was lifted virtually whole from another composer entirely.
Well, yes, I understand that they can put this aria up an octave or two and give it to the soprano, but it baffles me that they would want to do that with a famous aria that people actually know. Also, when Handel rewrote/reworked arias for subsequent use (don’t know enough about the other composers’ habits to comment), he usually only transposed octaves between sopranos and tenors, or put it up or down a key between sopranos and altos. Usually Handel would do substantial rewriting when repurposing a bass aria for another voice type, because bass vocal writing was typically very different than writing for the other voice types (often the vocal line would double the basso continuo line, and you would see many more leaps and less fioratura). It just seems like an odd artistic choice to give this aria to a soprano.
Oh, and Handel’s Ombra mai fu was not lifted wholly from another composer, though he was reusing a libretto that had already been set by other composers and stole thematic material from them all the time. Are you perhaps thinking of this version by Bononcini? There are some similarities (some of the melodic material in the violin part shows up in the vocal line in Handel, but they are very different compositions and would’t be confused with each other.
I just listened to the Bononcini and to the Cavalli version that Bononcini appropriated. If you listen to them all in the order composed, you can hear the basic melodic line expanding but always from recognizable roots. The Bononcini as sung is not as far from the Handel as you indicate. Handel also took instrumental music from other composers — they all did in that period.
I would pay good money to hear Domingo’s Agitata da due venti.
Or, better yet, for an encore the entire cast should like arms and do a midnight Agitata, perhaps with a bouncing kickline.
And yet Domingo’s Agitata would probably be more accurate than Danielle’s…I don’t dislike her as much as many others here do, I just don’t think that this coloratura music is really her rep. Maybe she should have switched roles with Lisette Oropesa?