Beginning with a momentary encounter in an English train station bar, the housewife Laura Jesson (Elizabeth Futral) meets the sympathetic doctor Alec Harvey (Nathan Gunn) as he wipes a piece of grit from her eye.  The grit becomes the first seed of future unintentional encounters, a seed that later blooms into a thorny romance.  The guilt that Laura feels from cheating on her husband Fred is great—but she continues to seek more from the man who changed her “ordinary Thursdays” into a short-lived life of marital deception and self doubt.

Seeing each other for champagne lunches, assignations in unoccupied flats, and most often, on the bridge overlooking the flowing river at Eden Lock changed Laura forever.  The storm ends with Alec’s departure to South Africa to continue his life calling of helping those in need.  “Forgive me for meeting you” he will ask, “for taking the piece of grit from your eye.”  While Laura returns to her steadfast Fred, neither Laura nor Alec will forget the fleeting moments of rapture they experienced:  “I want to be remembered… to the end of my days.”

Although the listening experience was pleasurable, I doubt Brief Encounter will be remembered “to the end of my days.”  Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, the work had its world premier on May 1, 2009.  Recorded that same month, this live Deutsche Grammophon recording retains impressive quality of Prévin’s orchestrations and Futral’s and Gunn’s moving performances.

Moreover, librettist John Caird’s storytelling transports the listener into the drama of the tumultuous relationship.  Under the direction of Patrick Summers, the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra easily conveys the emotions inherent in Prévin’s score—longing, love, suspense, loss.  More impressively, Prévin is able to transport us from train station, restaurant, and flowing river, with his telling undertones.

Where Prévin’s score lacks staying power is in the awkward scoring of Caird’s dialogues and conversations.  While Laura’s and Alec’s monologues are richly scored with beautiful moments of lyricism, the dialogue is often stilted and awkward, leaving the listener either unaffected by the weight of Caird’s words or questioning the appropriateness of Prévin’s scoring.

Particularly troublesome were the dialogues between the barmaid Myrtle (Meredith Arwady) and her lover Albert (Robert Orth).  Additionally, moments of raw emotion could have been much better conveyed through a breathless word or two, a strategy that was only used in Act II by an insignificant character, Beryl (Alicia Gianni).

While Futral and Gunn both shone in their depiction of the adulterous lovers, this was surely Futral’s opera.  Her character, Laura, had the weight of stage time, arias, and dialogue, interacting with Alec, her husband Fred, friends, the audience and herself on the emotional rollercoaster of her affair with Alec.  Futral beautifully encompassed the moments of excitement, lust and longing that Laura experiences, all the while skillfully portraying the turmoil of self-doubt and loathing caused by the relationship.  Prévin wrote some notable arias for this character, with highlights including “Fred-Fred-dear Fred,” “This pain can’t last,” and “This is a face of a woman who lies.”

Nathan Gunn’s manly prowess echoed throughout his performance of the doctor Alec that easily persuaded Laura into the affair against all protests.  Gunn’s diction, as usual, was flawless, and his hunky baritone voice pours over the listener as we, too, dream of numerous brief (or not so brief) encounters with him.

Unfortunately, the minor characters took away from Futral’s and Gunn’s performance, abetting Prévin’s moments of awkwardness in their depictions of unwilling onlookers to this love affair.  Arwady as Myrtle the train station bar owner sounded more like Mary the Mover than a critical and sympathetic commentator on the affair.  Orth as Myrtle’s frequently rejected lover sang with nasal tones in an unpleasant cockney accent.  Rebekah Camm’s Dolly was shrill and unintelligible.  Lastly, Kim Josephson encompassed his character, Laura’s husband Fred, with his vocalizations:  steady but unimpressive.

Brief Encounter deserves to be heard, but only in the context of Prévin’s development as a composer.  Because the story and Caird’s libretto are so compelling, Brief Encounter might make for a better evening at the opera than listening to this CD on a Saturday morning.

“Glimmerglass Opera has a notable record of performing Handel, but its productions have sometimes emphasised cuteness over emotional substance. Rather than improving the situation, Chas Rader-Shieber’s staging of Tolomeo, the first by a professional company in the US, sets a new low…. Rader-Shieber does nothing for Tolomeo except make it the butt of his jokes.” [Financial Times]

“…he preferred to drown the story-line in a never-ending barrage of visual gags, kitsch and cheap laughs. In the end, it was Rader-Shieber’s directing efforts that fell into the open sewer and died.” [CNY Cafe Momus]

Note that this is “F.B.” Michael MacLeod‘s last season at Glimmerglass; next year the reins pass into the hands of  ”D., Y. K.” Francesca Zambello, whose offerings will include the quintessential Callas vehicle Medea, with erstwhile boo-magnet Alexandra Deshorties as the titular witch.

And so it seems to be with Houston Grand Opera’s new production of the supposedly idiot-proof Tosca, as devised and executed by the All Albion All the Time team of John Caird and Bunny Christie.

According to critic William Albright:

For some reason there are gaping holes in the ceiling of all three… sets (a church, a room in a palace, a prison). Baron Scarpia seems to live or office in a storeroom piled high with wooden crates and augment his police chief’s salary by dealing in black market art objects and cases of wine. Caird’s Tosca doesn’t dramatically leap to her death from the prison roof, she stabs herself in the throat like Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, staggers a bit, and tumbles backward out an open window.

And every now and then a ghostly, barefoot little girl dressed in white appears onstage, apparently to symbolize death, fate, or something. Mostly she just seems to have wandered in from The Lovely Bones.

And pity poor Patricia Racette, whose role debut as Tosca was costumed in “a woefully drab gray ball gown with a huge caboose-like ruffle on the rump.”

Why, La Cieca asks, was the need felt to import a British team when there is an abundance of American directors who could have done just as lousy a job? Where, for example, were James Robinson and Mark Lamos?

Brit crit calls Nico Muhly‘s work “slow, painful death”; Nico calls Brit crit “cunty” and makes fun of the funny way they spell stuff. Which means that the 2011 premiere of Two Boys at ENO should be great fun for all us sport fans. [The Guardian]

La Cieca should know by now that any think piece that kicks off with the locution “I have from time to time wrestled with this conundrum” is just going to piss her off and she should just close the tab. But she didn’t, and this is what she found a little lower down (in more than one sense of the word):

I have always been rather disgusted by Benjamin Britten’s distinctly unhealthy interest in young boys. There is no proof he ever engaged in sexual activity with any of them: but his behaviour would today come under the heading of “grooming” and he would have been put on the sex offenders’ register. Much of Britten’s music I find magnificent; he is possibly the only true genius among our 20th-century composers. Yet the homoeroticism of some of his later works, or rather the paedophilia, I find repulsive

That this same Simon Heffer manages to drag in the tiredest of all Wagner canard (the Ring is “laden with half-hidden hints of anti-Semitism”) doesn’t surprise me in the least: those who triumphantly spout one bit of received wisdom are likely to believe just about anything they’re read a hundred times before.

But let La Cieca stay within her bailiwick here and simply remind the smarmy Mr. Heffer that “homoeroticism” and “paedophilia” are two distinctly different things, the confusion of which has led to much hatred and discrimination against gay people. If he finds homoeroticism repulsive, at least he should be be man enough to say it straighforwardly, not with the weasel words he chose.

“We live in an age in which everyone is encouraged to express themselves, from inane blogging, Twittering and voting in mediocre talent shows. Please, let’s keep this out of the concert hall.” Jonathan Lennie admonishes over-enthusiastic applauders. (PS: the quotation sounds particularly funny if you do the voice.) [Time Out London]

Oh, but this looks dire.

Not the fellow wallowing amidst the counterpane, obviously — he’s rather dishy if you like that type — but rather what he’s advertising. It’s a reworking of Don Giovanni called (La Cieca only wishes she were making this up) “The Gay Don,” to be previewed on July 4 at the London Pride festival in Trafalgar Square.

If MusicOMH can be trusted, the gaydaptation is “set in a 1980s club and with most of the Don’s conquests as men rather than women.”

…Zerlina becomes Zac a young James Dean type, Masetto becomes Marina the vampish fiancée of Zac who gets stood up, Don Ottavio is Olga the beautiful and imposing Russian immigrant who is besotted with Alan ( Donna Anna)…

Oh, you can write the rest for yourselves. La Cieca is going to sign off now as she imagines with a shudder the staging of “Là ci darem la mano.”

Just how badly does Robert Heuer want Stewart Robertson out of Florida Grand Opera? Well, so La Cieca hears, badly enough for the board to agree even in the current economy to pay Robertson his full salary for next season. This is despite the fact that the maestro resigned early this year, and has been relieved of his conducting duties at FGO for 2009-2010.

James, whose name Ms. Howells cleverly veils as “Clyde” in her memoir, supposedly “invited her to his Docklands flat and, after they had shared a couple of bottles of wine, he peered across the table at her and said: ‘Be my mistress’.”

Howells responded: “All right, I’ll give it a go.”

La Cieca has obtained the following exclusive surveillance video of the pair’s first furtive meeting:

Meanwhile, here in New York, the NYCO board is meeting to discuss possible candidates to fill the gap left by the defection of Gerard Mortier. City Opera honchess Susan Baker told Bloomberg News she hopes a new general manager may be hired by the end of the year. Reportedly Michael Kaiser is assisting in the search process.

Baker, speaking at a fundraiser for the NYCO, lamented the “punishing economic environment that has so affected philanthropy.” Bloomberg neglects to mention whether the black-tie crowd pelted her with garbage.

In what may be 2008′s most stellar example of unintentional irony, the organization Opera America has elected as its new chairman … a Brit. According to musicalamerica.com, Anthony Freud, newcomer General Director and CEO of the Houston Grand Opera, will succeed Opera Theater of St. Louis General Director Charles MacKay.

Opera America President Marc Scorca deemed British citizen Freud’s election a “reflection of the importance and stature of Houston Grand Opera among our community of companies and colleagues by whom HGO is considered a leader in innovation and excellence.”

However, notes Musical America’s Susan Eliott, “It should be noted that Freud, longtime general director of the Welsh National Opera, has only been in Houston for two years. It was his predecessor, David Gockley, now general director of the San Francisco Opera, who put the company on the map, serving at the helm of HGO for 33 years.”

“Houston Grand Opera has appointed Laura Canning to run its young-artist training program, Houston Grand Opera Studio, effective Aug. 1. She follows General Director and CEO Anthony Freud from the Welsh National Opera, where she has been artistic administrator for the last ten years.” [via musicalamerica.com] 

And who the fuck, you may ask, is Laura Canning?  Well, a quick Google search turned up this tidbit illustrating her prowess as a vocal mentor:

Laura Canning, artistic administrator for the Welsh National Opera, agrees that Paul [Potts] is right to be resting his voice.

“I am really pleased to see that he is taking this whole thing seriously and looking after himself,” she said.

“Paul has got very strong vocal cords, which is why it is so important to look after them.”

. . . . And she is delighted about his meteoric rise to fame.

“No matter what people think about shows like Britain’s Got Talent, it is fantastic that opera is being brought to a whole new audience and the fact he is from Wales makes it even better,” said Laura.