One well might not think that. In fact, the very first true opera house in Japan will open on October 10. However, we do have quite a few opera performances and vocal recitals here. The Met is just finishing up its umpteenth Japanese tour. They are doing Cav/Pag, Carmen, Tosca, and Cosi, as well as concert performances of Verdi's Requiem and Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust.

I attended Tosca on June 1 at NHK Hall. Pavarotti sang Cavaradossi, Maria Guleghina, known as "that vile woman" and "arch bitch" in a certain Southern state, sang Tosca, and James Morris sang Scarpia, with Levine conducting the Met Orchestra. Pavarotti was Pavarotti: he looked lazy, and hardly acted, but he still has that gorgeous voice, even if it diminished a little. Guleghina sang Tosca a month ago in Tokyo, with Vincenzo La Scola and Renato Bruson, and she sounded a lot more fiery then than she did with the Met. James Morris must have sung too much Wagner. He can't sing legato at all, so important in Italian opera. His Scarpia was just coarse. Ugh!

Most people bought tickets for the Met's Così fan tutte to see Cecilia Bartoli sing Despina. I am not a big fan of hers, but I have never seen her live in an opera, so I paid $300 for a ticket in the balcony. (Many people paid $600 to sit closer.) When I went to see Tosca I heard that Bartoli hadn't shown up for the dress rehearsal of Così, so I was worried that she would cancel. When I arrived at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan on June 3, posted in the lobby was a photocopy of Bartoli's hand-written letter to Sarah Billinghurst, together with a Japanese translation. In the letter (whose childish scrawl was the subject of much unfavorable comment from the audience), she claimed that her specialist doctor ordered her a week-long complete rest due to a "neck problem." Ms. Bartoli also canceled her previous Japanese tour (allegedly because she was afraid of being killed in an earthquake!), so she is gaining notoriety as a frivolous prima donna here. She is supposed to be giving a number of recitals in late June. We'll see if she will make a miraculous recovery from her neck problem or not.

Australian soprano Clare Gormley filled in for Bartoli and sang a perky Despina. In the end, I and many members of the audience were quite pleased with the substitution. The other soloists were identical to the telecast in December. Vaness sounded tired and wobbly in Act 1, but she got considerably better in Act 2. Mentzer was doing her slapstick routine, and the men looked and sounded just like the telecast..

Ozawa Seiji has been conducting one opera per year for the past nine years in Tokyo under the sponsorship of the French cognac company Hennessy. Last year, he did Madama Butterfly (Leech, Gorchakova, Terfel), which I thought was rather boring, thanks mostly to Gorchakova's blowzy Cio-Cio-San. Ozawa has chosen Die Zauberfloete this year. I attended one of the performances on May 23, at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, in Ueno, Tokyo. I indulged in a few glasses of the free cognac Hennessy provided before the performance and during the intermission, so I will say in advance that my judgement may have been a little clouded. (BTW, they served V.S.O.P. With the kind of money we had to pay for tickets, I demand that they use at least X.O. next year!)

Zauberfloete kept me awake most of the time (being a Japanese, I was naturally exhausted from overwork). Sumi Jo was frankly miscast as the Queen of the Night. I had seen her sing the same role in L.A., and I wasn't impressed. Firstly, she has such a tiny voice that Kathleen Battle sounds Dimitrova in comparison. On May 23, she had no fire, no power, or no menace: a real queen of the Munchkins! Furthermore, her top notes were taking on very unpleasant edges, too. She barely touched the F in alt in "O zittre nicht." Although she was able to hit all the notes in "Der Hoelle Rache," her E's and F's were sour, in spite of the fact that she seems to be often thought of by some as too sweet-toned for the Queen.

Sarastoro is my least favorite operatic character of all, what with his holier-than-thou sermons and seemingly-democratic-but-practically-tyrannical power. So, no matter who may sing Sarastro, I guess I will always get bored (unless Edita Gruberova decides to sing it). Paul Plishka is WAY passé. Vocally speaking, his Sarastoro was nothing to write home about , with the lowest notes virtually gone. So, he was more like a besotted uncle figure (à la Giorgio in I puritani) than the obnoxious sexist/right-wing religious wacko that I usually see him as. Plishka made one rather big mistake, beginning to sing several bars too early, at one point.

Now what's the big deal about Mark Oswald? Sure, he looks young, and has boy-next-door good looks, which he made the best of by acting very cute--too cute, in fact--as Papageno. But his singing struck me as so ordinary. Could somebody enlighten me? And who is this mediocre soprano named Belinda Thayer Oswald, who sang Papagena? Is she part of the Oswald package?

Frank Lopardo, with a crew-cut, sounded more butch as Tamino than when I had seen him as Tonio in La Fille du Regiment at the Met a few years ago. But his basic timbre is still too clouded (nasal?) for my taste. He looked like a believable Prince, though. (But why on earth did the Queen of the Night ask Tamino to save Pamina for her? He cries "Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!" and FAINTS while running away from a snake, and it was the three ladies who killed the snake! If I were the Queen, I would most definitely not rely on such a puss. Send those three butch ladies to the rescue instead.!

All the Barbara Bonney fans I know are straight boys with whom I wish to maintain a cordial (if nonsexual) relationship, so I was worried about what to say if she sounded awful. Fortunately, she sounded and looked lovely as Pamina throughout.

I guess a lot of people are familiar with David Hockney's sets, as they are the same as those seen at the Met. I found them pretty, but not really fabulous the way his L.A. FROSCH and the Chicago/SF Turandot are. The production by David Kneuss, who directed a wonderful production of Les Mamelles de Tiresias at last year's Saito Kinen Festival at Matsumoto, should also be familiar to many listers, from the Met Zauberfloete. Suffice it to say that I have seen enough vanilla productions of this Singspiel that I now crave kinkier ones, like, a dominatrix drag queen in leather fighting over a jail-bait blond West Hollywood type with a leader of the Log Cabin Club, or something....

Ozawa's conducting was on the brisk side, and New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra played competently, but I am not yet convinced that Ozawa is a good opera conductor....

Tokyo is frequented by veteran divas and divos. Such esteemed singers as Bergonzi, de los Angeles, Haefliger, Gedda, Prey, Ameling, and Kraus have sung here quite recently. Renata Scotto gave a recital at a nice hall in a women's college in Tokyo on May 28. The "more-than-a-diva" is called by the affectionate nickname Jagaimo-San (Ms. Potato-head) in Japan, because her face bears a striking resemblance to an Irish potato, especially in photos taken in her pre-glamour days, when she was singing leggero roles like Amina and Lucia.

Scotto appeared on the stage wearing a chic almost-black-dark-blue dress with a slit that occasionally exposed her legs. From my seat on the third row, dead center, I felt as if I could almost reach her. She started her recital with "Arianna a Naxos," a fairly long cantata by Haydn made up of two recitatives and arias. Although I have never considered her instrument to be really beautiful, she sang this piece in a very dramatic way that kept me from dozing off . Her middle still sounds quite good, and as long as she is not singing above the staff, she is still the great little Renata.

The tessitura for the Rossini's "Regata Veneziana" songs, which she sang next, is not so high, and lies in the area where Scotto must feel comfortable. She sang them in so endearingly cute (if not downright coquettish) a manner I knew that I was going to enjoy this recital. Scotto was certainly much more charming in this repertoire than a certain young Italian mezzo known for her facial gymnastics.

After a 15-minute intermission, Scotto came back to the stage wearing a more conventional (?) light-blue dress. She sang four songs "Vaga luna," "Malinconia, Ninfa Gentile," "Dolente Immagine Di Figlia Mia," "Per Pieta, Bell'idol Mio" and an aria "Depo l'oscuro numbo" from Adelson e Salvini, all by Bellini. I had heard Scotto sing them in her highly enjoyable 1995 Tokyo recital, so they must be something she thinks she can sing very well now. However, unlike Rossini's songs, Bellini's made Scotto expose some rather unpleasant highish notes sung forte, which made me cringe several times. The aria also sounded a little uncomfortable when she had to sing high in piano. (In fact, I have heard only Scotto and Rosina Wolf sing "Depo l'oscuro numbo," and, with all due respect to the latter diva's undoubtedly multitudinous admirers in New York, I prefer Scotto -- although my favorite rendition of Bellini's "Oh! quante volte," which is almost identical to "Depo l'oscuro numbo," is by Edita Gruberova.)

The same thing (about some unpleasant high forte notes) can be said of Scotto's set of Wolf-Ferrari songs although the overall impression of her rendition was moving, owing to her dramatic sense.

I had seen Le Villi only once, on TV, about 10 or so years ago, so I hardly knew "Se come voi piccina," which she sang well, but I kept wondering why she didn't choose a more familiar Puccini aria that is within her current vocal means. Her "Sole e amore" was quite delightful. She ended her official program with "Ebben? Ne andro lontana" from La Wally, receiving big applause, and also several bouquets from her adoring fans, all of whom, by the way, were female. Where were all the Scotto queens??

She sang four encores, the first being Massenet's "Ouvre tes yeux bleus"." She then sang Carmen's Seguidilla beguilingly, and I thought that her "Quando m'en vo" was fabulous, including the final high B. The last of the encores was "Over the Rainbow." Being a "friend of Dorothy," I shouldn't be too critical of anyone attempting "Over the Rainbow." My lover, who lives in L.A., conjectured that Scotto "probably didn't sound any worse than Judy Garland when she last sang it". I guess he's right.

-- Nakamura Akira