To take on the nerd stuff first: in general the tech now is pretty close to transparent. The projected image is clean and detailed, with a strong sense of light and shadow; textures of fabrics in particular I thought came across very clearly, without the super-sharp focus that tends to make everyone, even 19-year-old starlets with airbrushed makeup, look haggard. The sound is clear, though it is obviously mixed as a broadcast and not as a theater acoustic: voices are extremely present and the bigger instruments turned a bit strident as (I would assume) they overloaded the individual microphones worn by the singers. The orchestra was more plausible sounding, somewhere in the middle distance, and there was very little stage noise besides the banging and thumping that naturally accompany the beating of Masetto, for example.  I was particularly impressed at how the engineers managed to minimize the rumble of falling chairs during Donna Anna’s great act 1 recitativo accompagnato.

There were glitches and my sense was that they were somewhat worse than par for the course. For the first half of act 1, the sound would drop out for an instant every five minutes or so, though eventually that resolved. Worse was a signal loss during the finale ultimo, just at the point when Don Ottavio and Donna Anna sing their little “reconciliation” duettino. I took a bathroom break before leaving and then heard music as I re-entered the lobby, so I was able to return to the auditorium for the final moments of the opera. It seems like there should be some way for the local operator to skip back in the stream and show the missing moments, but at any rate it wasn’t a deal-breaking glitch.

That I was still interested to see that notoriously anticlimactic epilogue is a tribute to Carsen’s production. It may not have opened any new doors in Don Giovanni interpretation, but the fairly familiar theme of metatheater as manipulation was presented with flair, a lot of humor, and a visual restraint that is both chic in itself and self-effacing in throwing the focus onto the performers. Big-personality singers like Anna Netrebko and Barbara Frittoli positively bloom when styled in little black dresses and sleek coiffures. In fact, they closely resembled Anouk Aimée and Yvonne Furneaux in one of the all time greatest “style” films, La Dolce Vita.

What sets Carsen above a lot of other directors immersed in pop culture, though, is that he uses these elements not as ends in themselves. In other words, he doesn’t fall into the trap a hack director might do, and present Don Giovanni as a sort of rehash of La Dolce Vita. For example, La Netrebko is the only one here wearing sunglasses, nd even that modernist cliche is rationalized by the dramatic situation: she is attending a funeral for her father.

Where Carsen doesn’t quite pull the conceit off is where most performances of Don Giovanni come to a crashing halt, i.e., between Zerlina’s second aria and the graveyard scene. This big lull in the second act is, I think, da Ponte’s fault: he ran out of story and so the plot marks time for necessary (and beautiful) music movements. Carsen’s solution was in part to indicate “it’s just an opera, after all,” with the sextet flailing away in conventional gestures, lit by footlights, as Don Giovanni and Elvira’s maid enjoy the private performance. That left the two grand arias, of course, and there Carsen didn’t seem to have such rigorous ideas.

The finale ultimo (what we saw of it) seemed a bit half-baked too. Making Don Giovanni’s death a mirror image of the Commendatore’s felt a little too neat to me, and from the time the old man drew his sword it was all too obvious where the scene was going. That that the “death” was just another manipulative performance by the Don was a good idea, but I think its irony might have landed better if the death scene we just saw had been more conventional, the “standard” demise with flames and such.

The singers were all on a high level without any example of absolute brilliance. I was awed by Netrebko’s ferocious attack on “Or sai chi l’onore” and I love the sheer velvet of Peter Mattei‘s baritone, especially how he can suggest vehemence though emphasis of diction without pushing his lyric instrument into anything like an ugly sound. Frittoli and Giuseppe Filianoti in a way are similar performers in that they transcend non-stellar vocal material with dramatic intensity and superb musicality. That said, her voice is in poorish condition generally these days and his more generally good, though in Ottavio’s music he sounded tight, as if on the fence whether to sing out or to fabricate a “genuine” Mozart sound. (I wish he’d sing out.)  Štefan Kocán (Masetto) is an artist that bears watching, and not just because he’s so pretty!

The biggest letdown was Daniel Barenboim‘s conducting, which doesn’t belong in any opera house, let alone La Scala. After a slow, erratic and noisy performance, the maestro took the Maria Ewing coward’s way out in his curtain call, appearing onstage not alone but with the orchestra. Anyone that worried about being booed needs to find another place to work.

La Cieca’s spy reports:

That’s about all I can tell you about the accident. Mariusz had told people that he was injured a while back, but that he was completely healed. He seems to think that this was a recurrence of the earlier injury. He seemed to be in considerable pain, and staff was sufficiently alarmed to call EMT immediately.

Other than that things went pretty well, but I’m sure that the accident threw off people’s timing. Croft had been involved in rehearsals, and really did an excellent job under the circumstances. (Although he didn’t seem to be expecting “Finch’han del vino” to be taken quite as fast as it was. Exciting though.)

Luisi was extremely good.  Interesting and intelligent ideas everywhere. Orchestra seemed quite invigorated by it all.

Frittoli was a superb Elvira. Marina Rebekah reminded me a bit of Edda Moser, whom I liked. Voice is a bit hard, but accurate and carries very well. She sort of bobbled the great “abbastanza” line, but I liked her a lot.

Pisaroni was very good. We’ve come a long way from the buffo approach to this role. He is equal in virility and power to the Don, just not in class: that’s what eats him.

Vargas was good. Quite elegant, and a good bit more masculine than other Ottavios. The face is rather buffo, and a bit of a problem in a cast where everyone else looks so appropos.

The production is basically a unit set trying not to look like a unit set. A straightforward unit set might have been better. The “Hollywood Squares” analogy seems to be carrying through to this production: not so hot an idea.

(Photo: Nick Heavican)

This cancellation may in fact not be the most startling news coming out of Cooperstown this summer, but La Cieca will have to ask the cher public to be patient for a bit as she gathers further information.

John Chest as Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte at the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera. (Photo: Kristen Loken Anstey)

Portraits: Kuba Swietlik.

The gala, for those unfamiliar with its format, starts early (6:30 p.m.) and runs straight through with no intermission, to make sure the big-gun donors who paid for the post-performance dinner on the Avery Fisher promenade would not have to wait too long to fill their bellies.  At a running time of nearly two hours, this was hard on some audience members, who began to leave on a rush to the bathrooms before the final numbers were sung.  Except for a brief introduction by Tucker’s son, there were mercifully no speeches, and not even any announcements of the singers, so you needed to memorize the program to know who was singing what, or look at it by the light of your cell phone, which most of us did.  Maestro Marco Armiliato conducted members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the New York Choral Society, in tiered ranks at the back of the stage, lent their massed voices where needed, most notably in the Finale of Act III of La Gioconda, which closed the program.

Most of the singers were known quantities in the full tide of their careers, though a couple of relatively unknown young tenorinos, James Valenti and Pavol Breslik, stepped before the gala audience with the assurance of veterans.  Valenti, winner of the 2010 Richard Tucker award and therefore prominently featured in the gala, is a tall, dark and handsome young man with a sharp profile and a strong, if as yet relatively featureless, lyric tenor voice.  He opened the program with  “E la solita storia del pastore” from Cilea’s L’arlesiana and later sang in the ensembles “Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso” from La Rondine and “Bella figlia dell’amore” from Rigoletto, making a positive, if not overwhelming, impression.

Slovakian tenor Breslik, a photogenic blond with a square jaw and five o’clock shadow that would get him props in a fashion layout, essayed “Una furtiva lagrima” with forward, focused tone and a tight vibrato with an ingratiating ping (we like that in a tenor), if not quite idiomatic in the Donizetti cantilena that can make this aria irresistible in the right hands.  The other gen X (or is it Y? or Z?) representative was lyric soprano Lisette Oropesa, who showed a lot of teeth in “Caro nome” and was fairly accurate in her pitches in the final unaccompanied cadences of this well-known aria (though she didn’t get to do the pianissimo trills of the coda).

Of the more established singers, most showcased familiar strengths and weaknesses.  Bass Ferruccio Furlanetto gave a soulful, if soporific rendering of the little-known aria “Riez! Allez!” from Massenet’s Don Quichotte, then followed up later with the crowd-pleasing “This Nearly Was Mine” from South Pacific, dragging the tempo so insistently that frustrated Maestro Armiliato had all he could do to keep the orchestra together behind him.

Latvian mezzo Elina Garanca, whom the Met is pushing as their new sexpot Carmen, unfortunately has neither the temperament nor the vocal allure to back up her admittedly good looks (memo to Peter Gelb:  opera – it’s about voice and stage presence and, hopefully, acting ability – not pretty faces and slender bodies).  Garanca was dull, dull, dull.  Both of her gala pieces should have been full of Spanish fire – “Carcelaras” from Ruperto Chapi’s zarzuela Las hijas del Zebedeo and the final scene from Bizet’s Carmen – but in both she came across as reserved and impassive.

In particular, her Carmen, opposite Brandon Jovanovich’s Don Jose (with whom she is sharing the Met stage this season in the ugly new Richard Eyre production) was so slack and non-present that she might as well have been in the sound booth phoning in her performance.  Much of that scene has to do with Carmen’s reaction to Don Jose as his pleas turn into threats – her silence has to be alive with contempt, impatience, challenge, anger, triumph, fatalism, something, anything.  But Garanca just stood there with the vacant expression of a miscreant appearing in traffic court with lame excuses.

Jovanovich, another looker who just got featured in the Times as the 40-year-old tenor whose moment has come, didn’t show off to his best.  In the aria, “Freunde! Das Leben ist lebenswert” from Lehar’s Giuditta,  his voice could barely be heard above the orchestra, which made one wonder how loud this cock will crow in the heavier repertory he is now being assigned.  He did however acquit himself decently if unremarkably in the Carmen scene, though with Garanca such a lackluster partner it was hard to judge his performance fairly.

Marcello Giordani, a more seasoned tenor, made a much stronger impression, though his sound, by now quite familiar to New York audiences (he’s the Met’s default tenor for heavy Verdi, Puccini and verismo roles) is neither beautiful nor elegantly produced.  Still, he can knock the high notes out of the park, so no wonder the gala committee gave him “Nessun dorma” for his solo, to which challenge he rose with his usual nasal, pitch-perfect bleat.  Unfortunately, in the middle of the aria, a trickle of blood began to streak down his chin (a shaving accident?), a gaffe to which Maestro Armiliato called his attention during the applause following the aria with lively gestures (“chin” – “blood” –“wipe”).

Butch but sensitive barihunk Simon Keenlyside gave an impassioned, richly intoned rendition of Massenet’s “Vision fugitive” from Hérodiade, marred however by a prop he had brought with him onstage, a clear plastic cup half-filled with some dark liquid that he kept nervously passing from hand to hand throughout the aria, as if he were dealing three-card monte.

Beloved diva Deborah Voigt made one of the most highly anticipated appearances.  The formerly overweight dramatic soprano is now, in her slimmed-down, post-bariatric surgery incarnation, the Met’s new babelicious diva; she is prominently featured, decked out with curly auburn tresses and a haughty glare, in the Met’s publicity stills for the new Robert LePage production of Die Walküre, in which she sings her first Brunnhildes next April.  She showed up at the gala, looking glamorous in a black strapless gown, to sing “Sola, perduta, abbandonata” from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.

Now, I’m a huge fan of Mme. Voigt, and can only applaud her reaching her goal of fitting into the little black dress that caused such a scandal a few seasons back at Covent Garden (look it up if you don’t know).  But the voice is another matter.  I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to notice that her voice, which used to be plush velvet on a core of steel and could reach to the back of the house with seemingly effortless freedom, seems now to have lost that core as well as a bit of the plush.  She used to be indomitable, singing with an ineffable combination of power and sweetness; now one worries, not so much about the climactic notes, as about all the rest of them.  I worry about your upcoming Brunnhildes, Debbie.  Prove that I worry in vain.  Please.

The no-shows, for the record, were the Slavic baritones Zeljko Lucic and Mariusz Kwiecen.  The surprise guest was mezzo Susan Graham (“I just ran into her on the street yesterday,” said Maestro Armiliato in his charmingly accented English, “and she agreed to perform for you tonight.”)  Instead of announcing her aria, Graham, an audience favorite,  simply said “you’ll know this tune,” before launching into Handel’s Largo, “Ombra mai fu,” from Xerxes, whose long legato lines she sang with elegantly shaded inflections, and without repeats.  (Whenever I hear this aria, I can’t listen to the text, “Ombra mai fu, di vegetabile, cara ed amabile, soave più,” without thinking of the words Bunthorne sings in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience: “If he’s content with a vegetable love, which would certainly not suit me, why what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be.”)

The true standouts of the evening were two sopranos, one up-and-coming, the other at the top of her career and her craft.  The up-and-comer was Angela Meade, a young lyric spinto with vocal heft and impeccable agility in passaggio, a killer combination.  Her Norma at Caramoor this summer was a revelation, and needs to be unveiled at the Met, the sooner the better.  For the gala she sang “Era desso il figlio mio,” the final scena from Lucrezia Borgia, with stunning ornaments and rapidissimo scales so clean you could see daylight between the notes.  To polish it off, she ended with a powerful high E flat true as an arrow, thrilling as a kiss in the dark.  It didn’t hurt that she looked wonderful, an ample woman with an abundant bosom that filled out her black gown with sparkles over the breast, and wearing pendant earrings of drooping brilliants so oversized it looked like she had stolen the chandeliers from the Paris Opéra and hung them on her ears.

But the pièce de résistance of the evening’s entertainment was, hands down, Anna Netrebko.  This wildly popular Russian diva is the real goods – an accomplished musician and a total and utterly shameless stage animal.  There is nothing she will not do to make an effect, as anyone who has seen her Elvira, Lucia and Violetta can attest.  When she puts her hands on her hips, you had better run for cover.  Just as in the carnival barker’s description of Little Egypt, “She shimmies, she shakes, she crawls on her belly like a rep-tile.”

First of all, she showed up in an electric blue clinging satin gown, with a huge Lady Gaga bow tilted upwards from her right breast as if it were trying to hail a taxi (the bow, not the breast). Then she launched into a frenzied account of Emmerich Kalman’s Magyar revel “Heia in den Bergen” from Die Csardasfürstin, which she accompanied with such raucus stamping and whirling, that when she whipped around to face the chorus, her jewels flew off and had to be recovered by the concertmaster.

But that was nothing to what happened later, when she joined Giordani in a sizzling account of the St. Sulpice scene (“N’est-ce plus ma main?”) from Massenet’s Manon.  He looked visibly shaken as Netrebko vamped, slithered and curled around him like ivy on a tree.  She seemed to be channeling Ursula the Sea-Witch (“Never underestimate the power of body language!”), Maria Montez in Cobra Woman and Divine in Pink Flamingos all at once.  To top it off, she ended the duet by embracing poor sweating Giordani (no doubt his chin started bleeding again) in a lock-lip clinch that lasted at least 30 seconds.

The reaction in the audience was electric, with the kind of whistles and screams usually heard at a rock concert.  And this was from a gala audience, most of whom were on the shady side of sixty.  Of course, all this would have been of little account if she had not been delivering the vocal goods as well; but her soprano, which has matured into a plummy, multi-hued instrument, not only managed to negotiate all the notes with accuracy and subtle intonation, but was fully engaged in her acting, so that her visual shenanigans and vocal effects supported each other – quite a dazzling cocktail.  The audience didn’t want her to leave the stage.

Now I’d like to see her Carmen.  I can’t wait till her voice is ready for it.

Don Gionanni: Bo Skovhus
Leporello: Kyle Ketelsen
Masetto: David Bizic
Don Ottavio: Colin Balzer
Donna Anna: Marlis Petersen
Donna Elvira: Kristine Opolais
Zerlina: Kerstin Avemo
Commendatore: Anatoli Kotscherga

Chœur, English Voices
Chef de chœur, Tim Brown
Orchestre Freiburger Barockorchester

Direction musicale, Louis Langrée
Mise en scène, scénographie, Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes, Dmitri Tcherniakov et Elena Zaytseva
Lumières, Gleb Filshtinsky

La Casa della Cieca will welcome any realtime chatters among you!

So, what is “Deja Vu,” you ask? Is it opera, rock concert, arena show, or what?

The answer is “or what,” actually. Ironically, “Deja Vu” promises to be something you’ve never seen before, to wit:

Breaking all operatic strictures and inventing a new style of music called “mono-show”, Krutoi and Hvorostovsky achieve the impossible; a perfect culmination of sight and sound in an epic high fantasy theatrical program filled with arias, ballads, parables, aerial installations, extensive scenery, state of the art lighting design, and a world class orchestral and choral accompaniment.

And it goes something like this:

Bare-chested ere the world was young, ur-Barihunk Nathan Gunn continues to work the workout, currently in the Wall Street Journal.

The New Orleans Opera Association likes to describe New Orleans as “America’s First City of Opera,” and it’s true that opera performance has a long history in the Crescent City, dating back to at least 1796 when André Ernest Grétry’s Sylvain was presented.  Since then, New Orleans, and opera in New Orleans, has had its ups and downs…. like the fire which destroyed the French Opera House in 1919, and Hurricane Katrina, which nearly destroyed the whole city in 2005.  

Mab about the boy: Matthew Worth, Mercutio at New Orleans Opera. Photo by Balance Photography.

The New Orleans Opera Association lost many of its costumes and sets in the flooding, and its performing home, the Mahalia Jackson Theater was severely damaged which forced the company to perform in temporary lodging.

So, our local community is delighted that this year marks the return of opera to the restored Mahalia Jackson. The new stage is named in honor of famed tenor and occasional baritone Placido Domingo, who helped organize a 2006 charity gala that kept our opera company from closing down.  (The gala was held at the sports arena…. one of the few venues in town that wasn’t devastated at the time) Unfortunately the renovated theater still has its familiar acoustic eccentricities:  strings and male voices are a bit muffled.

I attended the recent Sunday matinee performance of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette …a work first heard in New Orleans in 1869. The theater looked great, as did the traditional production. The costumes and sets in Act I had a rich, golden appearance that resembled an illuminated manuscript.

Tenor Paul Groves, last seen in New Orleans in 2007 as Faust was an effective Romeo. Juliette was portrayed by Nicole Cabell, who has a charming stage presence and looks the part. Her voice has a warm, creamy quality, but, unfortunately her coloratura was a bit smudgy. There were moments when she and the conductor briefly parted ways. And, frankly I did not hear a trill out of her all evening. During the Act IV “Ce n’est pas le jour” duet, there were some odd acting choices that briefly threatened to turn the opera into a teen sex comedy. I imagine that was the director’s fault. Cabell managed to get things back under control with a strong, if not spectacular, “Amour ranime mon courage.”

I was accompanied by a friend who is not really an opera fan who said the highlight of the evening was “that turtledove song” performed by Jennifer Rivera’s Stephano.  I wouldn’t go that far, but she definitely made the most of her solo turn. Michael Worth was very appealing as Romeo’s fun-loving but doomed friend Mercutio.

The day after opening the 2009-10 season with Hugo Weisgall’s Esther, New York City opera presented one of the most beloved operas in the entire repertoire, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in a new production by Christopher Alden.

Due to the company’s notorious financial woes, Don Giovanni will be the only new production of the season, and it was immediately evident that not much of even a limited budget could have been spent on sets or props. The stage is almost bare: all the audience can see are two rows of chairs (plus one single chair on far stage right), five pendant lamps and a huge neon cross on the wall.

Just before the music begins, a large group of people, wearing what looked like costumes from the 1930s, take a seat on the chairs, while a masked man occupies the chair on the left.  Then comes the first ingenious coup de théâtre. As the audience is led to believe that the people sitting on the stage are members of the chorus, some of them, one by one, turn out to be the principal characters of the opera. The loner is, of course, the Don himself.

Da Ponte, the librettist, called this opera a “dramma giocoso”, while Mozart in his own catalog defined it an “opera buffa”. There is very little “giocoso”, let alone “buffo”, in this production, where Alden accentuates the drama, almost neglecting the comic part of the work. It is a debatable decision, but it was consistent throughout the opera and in my opinion it worked, creating a complete, often viscerally gripping theatrical experience. The director had a specific vision of the work in mind and brought it to life in a coherent, consistent and logical manner.

The treatment of the most comic role of the opera, Leporello, was emblematic of this choice. Here Leporello, entirely dominated and brutalized by his master, moves around the stage always cowering in fear or crawling like a worm. There is hardly any cheerfulness in him, to the point that the wisecracks and the quips Da Ponte writes for him sound almost incongrous.

To his credit, Jason Hardy (Leporello) most appropriately recited them in a sort of removed, weary way. Don Giovanni at one point tries to reassure and soothe him by stroking his hair, then almost immediately drags him by one arm across the stage. As if this wasn’t enough, in the masked ball scene at the end of the first act Leporello wears the costume of Pierrot, sadness personified.

Don Giovanni is a brute, a sociopath without suavity. He doesn’t kill the Commendatore fighting sword to sword, but smashes the old man’s skull against the wall, and the blood stain remains up there until the end, perhaps the most conspicuous thing on the stage. Zerlina’s attempted rape is vicious; in the penultimate scene, the chords which should mark the Commendatore’s approaching steps instead accompany Don Giovanni’s sexual thrusts into the body of Donna Elvira’s maid.

At the very end, as if to dismiss the notion that Don Giovanni has a happy ending (and to lessen the importance of the moral of the finale), all the characters and the chorus return to their seats exactly as they were at the very beginning, with the villain showing up, wearing the same mask, in his place on the right. The original scoundrel may be punished and gone, but another one is in his place and the cycle of evil is about to begin again.

Terese Wadden’s costumes were mostly attractive and appropriately updated.

Gary Thor Wedow’s conducting was superlative. Under his baton the orchestra sounded crisp and precise. I especially appreciated Maestro Wedow’s effort to show that Mozart was after all a son of his own time, and his operas were subjected to the same performance practices of the period. Thus, the conductor allowed the use of appoggiaturas and tasteful variations in the da capos of the arias. I will never be able to understand why most conductors believe that it is acceptable to add variations in, say, Paisiello or Cimarosa, but no, Mozart cannot be altered. Even a minor trick like a messa di voce on the word “maestosa” in “Madamina, il catalogo è questo” can add an element of variety.

Another small detail I enjoyed was that the singers did not pause and take a breath between the end of a recitative and the beginning of the aria or duet itself. For instance, Don Giovanni sings “…e là, gioiello mio, ci sposeremo. Là ci darem la mano…” in a single breath, to refreshing effect.

Backs against the wall: the sextet from "Don Giovanni" at NYCO. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

The cast all gave competent vocal performances, though none of them, with one single exception, really left an indelible impression. They all looked their respective parts and had the physique du rôle (and in a couple of cases, what physique it was indeed!)

Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch, who rose to prominence and made headlines baring all in Howard Shore’s The Fly, this time showed more modesty keeping his underwear on. Like all his other colleagues, he was scenically excellent and fully complied to the director’s vision. Vocally, he was passable without a particularly distinctive instrument. The same could be said for Hardy as Leporello. He spent most of the second act in various degrees of undress, revealing a body which wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of Playgirl.

Kelly Markgraf (Masetto), appearing in a tight wifebeater, also seems destined to swell the ranks, indeed the legions, of the barihunks. Bass Brian Kontes, who brought the appropriate gravitas to the role of the Commendatore, was the only one not requested to show some skin, but then he had to lie inside a coffin for most of the opera.

Tenor Gregory Turay’s instrument has noticeably darkened since the last time I heard him several years ago at the Met in the same role. From a typical tenorino leggero, Mr. Turay has almost become a full lyric tenor, but the voice reveals some spread and less focus on top. I would have liked more chiaroscuro, more differentiation in “Dalla sua pace,” an aria in which a tenor can work wonders by modulating its reprise with gradation of pianos and pianissimos. The agility in “Il mio tesoro intanto” was hardly the most accurate I have heard.

Ukrainian-American soprano Stefania Dovhan was debuting the arduous role of Donna Anna. She was not much more than adequate. I think her voice is a couple of sizes too small for “Or sai chi l’onore,” whereas “Non mi dir,” which would suit her lighter voice better, was burdened by barely acceptable coloratura: the picchiettati high As and Bs flat in the Allegretto moderato sounded forced and clumsy. This wasn’t certainly the virtuoso showpiece it usually becomes in the hands of expert belcantistas.

I regret to say I was not impressed with Joélle Harvey as Zerlina. Her soprano sounded too weak and thin in the middle register, where all of her music lies. It is a classic case of why it is often preferable to cast a lyric mezzo-soprano in this part.

Dulcis in fundo, the single exception was Keri Alkema as Donna Elvira. This role is ideal for this singer, who has just recently made the mezzo-to-soprano transition. Her voice is robust, even and homogenized, from a sonorous low register to a bright, penetrating and secure top. Thanks to the variations she was allowed, she had a real show-stopper with “Ah! Chi mi dice mai,” an aria which often goes unobserved for its brevity. “Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata” is a difficult piece especially for its tricky intervals, which Ms. Alkema nailed perfectly. This is a singer I would love to hear as Vitellia.

All the principals, to different degrees, struggled with proper Italian pronunciation, missing double consonants and producing very un-Italian r’s. Mr. Turay even sang “Morde mi dà!” Perhaps NYC Opera should invest in a better Italian coach.

One final positive note: the New York State Theater (pardon, the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center) now seems to have better, brighter, less muffled acoustics, the result of extensive renovations which included the removal of much of the carpeting and a number of seats. Too bad they didn’t get rid of those awful gigantic statues.

No, cher public, you’re wrong, because I’m not talking about barihunks; NYCO hasn’t a monopoly on those, and the Times scribe in fact has of late moderate his wonted zeal for the strapping earthy darlings of the lyric stage. No, no: it’s something else. 

For the longest time, Tony’s tip-top topic, amounting almost to an obsession one might say, was the subject of the sound enhancement system installed in the New York State Theater a decade ago.

Over the past ten years, TT has returned to his subject, uh, occasionally.

If La Cieca were feeling less charitable, she might call the Tommasini v. Microphone feud an idée fixe, but La Cieca is feeling charitable, so she’ll just say, well, at last Tony has got his wish.

Though, as TT himself notes, an acoustic theater does not necessarily mean a voice-friendly theater; so we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?

Hot hot hot Erwin Schrott is obviously not not not allowing fatherhood and impending marriage to distract him from quality gym time. More photos of the Schrott gun show (as seen recently in the Vienna Volksoper Theater an der Wien production of Don Giovanni) after the jump.

Some songs just steadfastly repel the crossover treatment. Some years ago Karita Mattila came to grief on “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” and now Anne Sofie von Otter doesn’t do much better. (Why does it always sound like they coached this number with The Opera Milf?)

(The entire concert, which includes some quite creditable singing and ring-a-ding-dinging from Peter Mattei, may be found here.)

La Cieca apologizes in advance to her dear colleague the Barihunks site, but she’s happy to unveil the latest of the barihunk breed. She first noticed this singer because he has an ideal barihunk name:  Holger Falk. He’s appearing in L’incoranazione di Poppea at the Boston Early Music Festival, where he garnered a strongly positive review from Allan Kozinn in the New York Times (“a solid, appealingly rounded sound that captured Ottone’s shift from sad sack to violent avenger to reformed lover”).

But Mr. Falk has more than just a fine voice and an apt monicker going on here. He has also that most important quality, the barihunk look, as evidenced by these photos from his website.  

[Holger Falk Bariton]

“A: Always,  B: Be, C:  Charlestoning. Always be Charlestoning, always be Charlestoning.”

[Photos of Canadian barihunk Olivier Laquerre from Barihunks.]

Andrea Bellissimo (Laetitia) and David Schmidt (Bob) star in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, a presentation of the New York Metro Arts Vocal Ensemble, a group whose name is longer than some of the operas they perform. The opera runs tonight through Saturday; here’s more information.

Scott Cantrell has a brand new metaphor, and he’s not going to let it slip through his fingers.

“Daniel Okulitch is hardly the libretto’s ‘scrawny little S.O.B.’ But, with a warmly oiled bass-baritone, he captures Joseph’s tenderness toward his mother as surely as his hostility and fear.”

“Nathan Gunn is the cast’s standout, an Alec with rugged good looks and a richly oiled baritone.”

Click to embiggen

Now, it’s one thing that Anna Netrebko is Photoshopped in from a different day, a different location and what may well be a different universe from our own, and don’t ask La Cieca why Mariusz Kwiecien is simultaneously checking his fly and treading on the train of Maija Kovalevska‘s gown. (No wonder she look so pissed!)

But just when you think it’s not humanly possible for Nathan Gunn to take a gayer photograph, the barihunk confounds us yet once more, with a pose that falls on the butch scale somewhere between Madame Recamier and April Stevens.

Or maybe Mr. Gunn can just throw in the towel and start programming “Teach Me Tiger” as an encore at his recitals.

La Cieca hears that the New York City Opera will present four five productions during their 2009-2010 season, including a new staging of Don Giovanni directed by David Christopher Alden and starring Daniel Okulitch (pictured). Revivals of “old” NYCO productions at The David H. Koch Theater include Weisgall’s Esther (with Lauren Flanigan), L’etoile, Partenope and Madama Butterfly.